Knowledge Management

Knowledge refers to useful and relevant units of information that have been accumulated through learning and experience. In one sense, vFire Core can itself been as a Service Knowledge Management System (SKMS), in that it includes the service portfolio, a configuration management system, and all related processes from incident to release. Any knowledge distilled from this data, or identified as having the potential to inform and improve these processes, can be stored in and made available through the vFire Core Knowledge Bank, from technical reports such as Availability plans to user-friendly "how to" articles. The vFire Core Knowledge Bank is the repository for all the knowledge that is collected in the system.

The vFire Core Knowledge Bank supports knowledge management by enabling Analysts to:

  • organize knowledge into types and sub-types
  • create knowledge entries, which can then be viewed by others
  • import Calls into the Knowledge Bank, so that they can be used as examples of workarounds and solutions
  • search the Knowledge Bank, within the limitations of their security roles. Knowledge entries can also be made available to Users, both on the main application and via the Self Service Portal

Knowledge entries are created and their content can be moderated for accuracy before they are published. They can be restricted to the main application, or made available to the Self Service Portal.

Access to knowledge articles and permissions to manage them and configure the knowledge bank are controlled via security roles and knowledge profiles.

Initially, the knowledge bank is configured using the following options:

Knowledge Bank Settings to enable the Knowledge Bank for your system, configure the format for knowledge entries, define review settings for knowledge entries and define setting for knowledge entries cloned from calls
Knowledge Base Types to rename base types base types used to define the nature of the knowledge entry in vFire Core
Knowledge Entry Types to define your own 2nd-tier knowledge entry types in vFire Core
Knowledge Profiles to create and update knowledge profiles, a way of categorizing knowledge entries that is more detailed than the knowledge base types
Knowledge Ratings to define and create knowledge entry ratings and scores
Knowledge Statuses to define statuses that can be associated with knowledge entries, such as Draft or Reviewed

Once the knowledge bank has been configured, Analysts can then manage the entries in any of the following ways, depending on their security role permissions:

Users and Analysts can then: