How do I create a Knowledge Collection?

Creating a knowledge collection is very much the same as other applications, however they do require a bit more setup.    Most applications allow users to create the content they contain, but knowledge collections simply consume knowledge documents from the host Knowledge Management system. This means in addition to being able to identify a collection, you must also tell it what content it should include.   

To create a knowledge collection, you do the same as any application.   Using the upper left pencil icon on a group page, select manage group, applications, add application, then add knowledge collection.

If you just configured the Knowledge Management application in general and the first full synchronization has not yet run, you will get a message that states a full synchronization is required.  This is because your community has not yet received any data that is needed to properly create a knowledge collection.   You can learn more about synchronization in How do I connect my community to my Verint Knowledge Management Site?.

If you have already had a successful synchronization, the create form will appear.

The first fields are name and description.  This is the name that will be displayed in your community and the description is a brief overview of what it is.  Currently description is not surfaced in the community user interface.

Understanding Tag Configuration

Knowledge Management  organizes its content using tags, however these tags should not be confused with tags in the community.   In community tags are used a secondary method of identifying and categorizing content. In Knowledge Management it is the primary navigation structure, especially when it comes to knowledge collections.   Knowledge Management tags and community tags are not related to each other.

When configuring a knowledge collection, four top level tags common to most Knowledge Management sites are used as the primary filter for selecting knowledge documents for the collection.  Currently the integration relies on these four tags and does not support any custom  or additional top level tags.  These tags are:

• Knowledge Base
• Product
• Region
• Topic

Using a combination of these tags, specific documents will be selected to be part of a knowledge collection.  They are all optional, and not selecting any tag filters will ignore the tag filtering all together.  When specifying the tags, the tags selected within a specific top level tag are considered OR, while the top level tags themselves are AND.  You can select tags in a top level area by typing the name to invoke a list to choose from, or use the browse link to see all the tags beneath that top level tag.

To understand how the logic is applied, consider the following configuration:

In this case, you can see several tags are selected for each top level tag to build this collection:

• Knowledge Base:  Internal
• Product: EFM 7.x, EFM 8.x
• Region: USA
• Topic: Installation, Administration

This means when the knowledge collection is finally saved, when it selects what knowledge documents to include, it will use the following logic:

"Find all knowledge document that are tagged   ('Internal') AND ('EFM7.x' OR 'EFM 8.x') AND ('USA') AND ('Administration OR Installation')"

Languages and Categories

In addition to tags, you can further restrict the selected knowledge documents by available translations and categories.  When determining the documents to go into a collection, filtering to language and category is actually applied first.

Languages

This will list all language packs installed on your community.  In order to show translated documents you must have the equivalent language pack installed, regardless of whether or not a knowledge document has a specific translation available.   The reverse also applies in that having a language pack installed on your community does not mean a document will be available in that language.  The community will always try and show a document in the logged in user's language, even if its different than the collection's configured language.   If one does not exist, it will show in the first available configured language.

So assuming User A is Spanish speaking according to their profile, if you configure a collection to only include English, it will still try and show it in Spanish.  If Spanish is not available, it will show the English version.  It will always have at least 1 translation to show because your configuration says to include the document it MUST have at least one of the configured languages available.

Categories

The integration supports four Knowledge Management categories:

• Articles
• Alerts
• FAQ
• Uploaded

This means you can select the check boxes next to the categories you wish to include in your collection(selecting none is the same as selecting all).   Currently these are the only supported categories.  The integration does not support custom categories or spidered content.

When building a collection, it first filters down to only the documents with translations supplied by the languages selected and only ones in the specific categories selected.  Consider this configuration:

In this scenario we are saying we only want documents with at least an English version and documents that are in the FAQ or  Article category.   When we combine this additional configuration to our above tag configuration, the logic that is applied as:

"Find all knowledge document that have an 'English' version AND are categorized 'Article' OR 'FAQ' AND are tagged   ('Internal') AND ('EFM7.x' OR 'EFM 8.x') AND ('USA') AND ('Administration OR Installation')"

Empty Knowledge Collections

If you specify too much filtering, you run the risk of not getting any documents that match the criteria.  In this case you will receive a system notification to prompt you that your collection resulted in no documents and to review your configuration.

Navigation Root

This option is not related to filtering the documents to include in a collection.  Instead this defines the navigation that will be displayed on the left hand side of the knowledge collection to allow you to filter the document list.  You can select any tag here, either by typing or selecting it using browse.  

On the left hand side of the knowledge collection, the entire tag tree starting with the tag you chose will be displayed, the actual tag you selected however is excluded.  Selecting a tag will filter the main document list by that tag and it's children.  The navigation does respect hierarchy, so if a document is tagged with a lower level child tag, it will also show when any level above that tag is selected.  Additionally if this tree contains a tag that is not used on any document in the collection, it will not be shown. 

You can choose to not set this, in which case no left hand navigation will be available.  The left hand navigation will also not show if you selected a tag tree in which no documents contain any of the tags in that hierarchy.

Below you can see a collection with a navigation based on the tag 'EFM' as shown above.  Notice the levels are collapsible and selected tag itself is omitted.

And this is a collection with no navigation specified OR the navigation has been filtered out entirely.

Once you have decided on all the filtering options, click SAVE.   You will be prompted that save was successful, however it may take several minutes for the collection and all documents to display as it can be a lengthy process depending on the data involved.

Editing a Collection

You can return and edit a collection at any time by selecting the pencil icon, then  'Manage Knowledge Collection'  when on a knowledge collection page.  If you are on a group page, select manage group, applications, then select the collection you wish to edit and select edit.   All of the above options are editable with the addition of the url key used by that collection.   The same potential delay in seeing changes applies.

Compatibility

The feature discussed in this article is only available in Telligent Community 10.2 and higher.  It also requires that you are running a licensed version of Verint Knowledge Management Enterprise v15.3 or higher and OpenAM as the Knowledge Management API authentication provider. 

Available Widgets

The following widgets are available specifically for use with Knowledge Collections.