KNOWLEDGE BASE: Building Your Knowledge Base
What is a Knowledge Base?
A Knowledge Base is a library of help articles you write and keep inside the Portal, organised into categories your readers can browse and search. It is the place for the answers you find yourself typing out again and again: how to sign in, what you need before a job starts, how to pay an invoice.
You can build as many Knowledge Bases as you like. One account might keep a single Help Center for everybody, while another keeps one for Clients and a separate one for Staff. Each is its own library, with its own categories, its own articles and its own address.
A Knowledge Base is not visible to anyone until you place it on a page. Placing it is a separate step, covered in its own article, and it is what decides who reads it and where.
Where do I find it?
Go to Content > Knowledge Base Pages. The list shows every Knowledge Base in your account.
Press Create Knowledge Base and give it a Name. That is the only thing required to get started, and you land on the new Knowledge Base ready to add categories.
TIP: The menu item is on by default for the Master Account, Admin, Project Manager, Office Manager and Team Mate Roles. If you cannot see it, check that Role's menu visibility in your Main Menu settings.
What are the four tabs?
Open a Knowledge Base and you get four tabs:
Categories: The shelves your articles sit on. Nothing can be published without one.
Articles: Everything you have written, in three views.
Placements: Every page showing this Knowledge Base, so you can see at a glance where it is live.
Settings: The Name, the Friendly URL and the Description.
How do I set up categories?
On the Categories tab, press Add Category. A category has a Name, an optional Description that readers see under the title, an Icon chosen from the icon library, and a Colour.
Categories go two levels deep. Any top-level category offers Add Sub-Category, and a sub-category holds articles just like its parent. Two levels is the limit: a sub-category cannot have children of its own.
Drag the categories to set the order readers see. The order you choose here is the order on the reader's screen.
IMPORTANT: A category that still has sub-categories under it, or articles in it, cannot be deleted. Move or delete what is inside it first. The platform tells you which of the two is in the way.
How do I write an article?
On the Articles tab, press New Article. You get the same Content Block Editor you already use for Portal Pages and Dashboards, with a palette cut down to what reads well in an article: Text Block, Single Image, Icon, Empty Space, Separator, Video Block, Embed Block, iFrame Block and Button Block.
Everything that is not the body lives in the Article Options panel on the right.
Title: The heading readers see. Required.
Summary: One or two lines under the title, shown in the category list and in search results. Marked Required to publish.
Category: Which shelf the article sits on. Also marked Required to publish.
Featured: Lifts the article to the top of the Knowledge Base. The toggle is unavailable until the article has been saved once, and says so: "Save the article first, then it can be featured."
Friendly URL: Part of the address readers open. Leave it blank and it is derived from the title.
SEO Options: An SEO Title and SEO Description, used in search results and link previews when you want them to differ from the Title and Summary.
What is the difference between Save Draft and Publish?
The editor's footer offers Publish, Save Draft, Save Draft & Keep Editing, Preview and Cancel.
A Draft is yours alone. It is saved, it is listed on the Articles tab with a Draft badge, and no reader can reach it however they arrive at the address.
Publish makes it readable. There are three things it will stop for, and it names the one in the way rather than publishing something half-finished:
A missing Summary: "Add a Summary before publishing this article."
A missing Category: "Choose a category before publishing this article."
A link that is not a full address: "Change each button, image and icon link to a full web address starting with https://, or to a mailto: or tel: link, before publishing this article." A published article can be opened by someone who is not signed in, so a shortcut link that only works inside the Portal would be a dead end for them.
Fix what it names and press Publish again.
Preview shows you the article exactly as a reader will see it, draft or not, without publishing anything. On a draft it says so: "You are previewing a draft. Only people who can edit this article can open it, and it appears at no public address until it is published."
TIP: Writing a batch of articles before anyone sees them is easy. Keep them all as Drafts, place the Knowledge Base when you are ready, then publish them. A published article appears the moment you publish it.
How do I manage the list of articles?
The Articles tab has three views.
All Articles is the full list, with the category each article belongs to, including the parent when it is a sub-category, and a Published or Draft badge.
Featured shows only the featured ones, and you drag them into the order readers see at the top of the Knowledge Base.
By Category groups them by shelf, and you drag within a category to set the order inside it. Until you set an order, a category lists its articles alphabetically. Once you have, a new article joins at the end.
A Draft keeps its place in both of these lists, so you can decide where it will sit before anyone can read it. It appears at no public address until you publish it.
Each row carries a menu: Edit, Preview, Publish or Unpublish, Feature or Unfeature, Save as Template and Delete.
Unpublish turns a published article back into a Draft. Nothing is lost, and readers stop seeing it straight away.
IMPORTANT: Deleting an article is permanent. Its address stops working for good and can never be given to another article in this Knowledge Base, so a link somebody saved will not quietly land on something else later. Anyone who opens it gets a "no longer available" page. If you only want the article out of sight for now, Unpublish instead.
What is on the Settings tab?
Name is what you call this Knowledge Base, and what readers see as its heading.
Friendly URL is part of the address readers open. Leave it blank and it is derived from the name.
Description is a short line about the library as a whole.
IMPORTANT: Deleting a whole Knowledge Base takes its categories and every article in it, and removes it from every page it was placed on. The confirmation spells out what is about to go. There is no undo.
Where does it go next?
A Knowledge Base on its own is not visible to anyone. To put it in front of readers you add the Knowledge Base Block to a page, and that is what decides who can see it and whether it is reachable from the open web.
CLICK HERE to learn about the Knowledge Base Block, and how readers browse and search.
CLICK HERE to learn about publishing a Knowledge Base on your own domain.
CLICK HERE to learn about Article Templates.
CLICK HERE to learn more about the Content Block Editor.