Overview
The Self Service portal provides your Callers with a view to your organization's Knowledge Base Articles. Articles provide the knowledge base library for your Vivantio and can be created in the Articles area using the New button. Text can be typed or copied and pasted in to the article and images easily uploaded. When uploading an image and specifying a size, the image is not automatically resized and compressed; it will still be uploaded at native size but will have HTML attributes applied to resize it for display. Users should take care to use image files of an appropriate size for web display.
Callers can search for articles in the Self Service Portal by Category or Keyword. Using the Queues tab, articles can be separated into Categories to allow a particular category of article to be visible only for example. The Queues area could also reduce the number of matching articles so that you can find exactly the right one quickly. For example, if you store user guides in the knowledge base you may want to search for all user guides relating to a particular product. To do this you would configure a queue of “User Guide” and list each of your products as a separate category. Other Queues could be Frequently Asked Questions (which would be answers to common customer questions), Technical (detailed documents which your technical staff would use to resolve a problem), Policies and Procedures (to ensure that Service Desk staff applies standard procedures).
For further information on creating Queues, please navigate to the Queues tab and access the Help button in the Admin Area.
Guidance
Navigate to the Admin Area > Self Service > Select a Portal (if you have more than one) > Articles
Here you will find a number of functions you can control locally:
Show Articles in Self Service
This allows Articles to be published in the Self Service
Allow Comment
This allows the User to comment on the Article within the Self Service Portal
Allow Rating
This allows the User to rate the Article in the Self Service Portal
Allow Public Access
This allows Users to visit the Articles without logging in to the Self Service Portal
Filter Public Articles
This will allow a Filter on Articles marked as Public
Show Attachment Categories
This will show the Attachment Categories within the Self Service Portal
Categories by Role
This will filter the Categories by Role
Display Related Articles
This will display any related Articles
Show quick links to related Ticket Categories
This will show quick links to related Ticket Categories
Keyword Search Mode
This allows your Users to search the Articles via a Keyword, Freetext or both.
Three options are available:
Keyword Only
In this circumstance, only the keywords specified for the article will be searched. So if e.g. you have an article that has the text “How to change the Toner in the C789 Printer”, and the keywords, “laptop, mouse, keyboard”, then:
- If you search for “mouse” the article will appear
- If you search for “toner” the article will not appear
This is a good option to use if a) most/all of your articles have explicit keywords specified and b) there’s a lot of overlap between common terms in the article text. If for example you’re an email service provider, there’s a good chance a lot of your articles will mention email. So you might NOT want to use the freetext search
Freetext Only
In this circumstance, keywords are ignored, and only the article text will be searched. So if e.g. you have an article that has the text “How to change the Toner in the C789 Printer”, and the keywords, “laptop, mouse, keyboard”, then:
- If you search for “mouse” the article will not appear
- If you search for “toner” the article will appear
I’m not entirely sure why you’d use this option to be honest – there’s a good reason to use keyword only, but I can’t think of a good reason to use freetext only
Keyword and Freetext
In this circumstance, everything is searched. So if e.g. you have an article that has the text “How to change the Toner in the C789 Printer”, and the keywords, “laptop, mouse, keyboard”, then:
- If you search for “mouse”, the article will appear
- If you search for “toner”, the article will appear
This is the best option for most customers, as long as you don’t have an explicit need for “keyword only”
Article List Widget
This feature allows the user to customize the number of items displayed in a list widget in the Self Service Portal along with defining the sort order of the grid. Fields are available at the top of the Properties page for the Article list widget in the Admin area > Page Customization for Self Service > Appearance. The Display Order field contains columns that the user can choose to sort the items in the list. The Direction field gives the options of sorting the items in either Ascending or Descending order based on the Display Order.
The List Mode drop down allows the user to either show all items in the list or provide a limit. If the user sets this field to limit the list then the Display First field below the List Mode drop down is enabled and allows the user to enter the maximum number of items to appear in the list. The Display First field is disabled when the List Mode drop down is set to All. The Display First field also only accepts non-zero numbers.
Now the user can set up their lists using the limit functionality so that the lists don't take up an extremely large amount of space or don't contain enough information Also, with the sort order the lists can contain the most recent or the oldest items using the appropriate data in the Display Order field.
The "My First 10 Articles" list is ordered by the Article's CreateDate in Ascending order with a limit of 10 giving the first 10 articles for the user (as the title indicates). In the Asset list titled "5 most recently added assets", the list is ordered by CreateDate again but this time in Descending order and having a limit of 5. Depending on the user's needs they have a reasonable amount of options for listing the data they are looking to show in the SSP without having to navigate an entire list or being limited by hard-coded values.
Reviewed: 30 March 2023