Knowledge Base

Note — desktop feature. This chapter describes the TechieCRM desktop application. The web portal carries a simpler Knowledge Base: a list of articles you can add, edit and delete, with a title, summary, content, category, status and tags. Its status choices are Draft, Published and Archived — the desktop's Expired and Internal are not stored on the web, and the web list's status filter offers exactly those three (it previously offered Expired and Internal, which never filtered anything). The rendered preview (PDF/Office), the Document and Hyperlink article formats, Keywords, Products/Services, the article Owner, Approve, Copy Article, Save/Email Article Content, the Search Articles dialog, and the toolbars, right-click actions and automations described below do not exist there yet.

Source-CRM equivalent: Knowledge Base. Lives in the lower-left of the Company Library panel (the separate KB icon was merged into Library).

In this chapter - The article list and preview - Adding, editing, approving, saving, deleting articles - On the web portal - Search - Not yet available

The list

Columns: (icon), Item # (FP-KB00001), Last Modified, Type (from the article's category), Title, Format (file type), Access (the article's status). Multi-select. The Type: dropdown at the right of the KNOWLEDGE BASE header filters by status (All, Draft, Published, Expired, Internal). Icon and row colour follow the article's format — the one you picked when you added it: Document (any attached file: Word, PDF, Excel, image, …) blue, Hyperlink teal, Standard (typed text) in the list's ordinary text colour. Those three are the only formats an article can have; there is no email-template or saved-search article in the Knowledge Base (those are Company Library item types, not KB articles). Click an article → the preview shows Article #, Status, Product, Category, Keywords, Owner, Last modified and the body (PDF/Office rendered; other attachments say "use Open or Save Article Content As…").

Working with articles

Toolbar (when the KB list has focus): Search Articles, Add Knowledge Base Article, Copy Article, Save Article (save the content to disk), Approve (sets Published), Print Article (the article's details and full content in the print preview). Right-click: Add Knowledge Base Article ▸ Standard Format… / Document Format… / Hyperlink Format…, Open, Delete Selected Articles (confirmed), Select, Email Article Content… (the Send Email options, then your desktop e-mail composer with the article as the message body — a Document-format article is attached as its file), Save Article Content As…, Approve Article, Print Column Report (the list as shown) / Print Detailed Report (the article), Properties. Article dialog: Article details — Article # (assigned), File type, Status (Draft / Published / Expired / Internal), Owner (user picker), Creator, Last modified; Article description — Title, Keywords, Products/Services and Categories (click → Select Values picker); Article content — rich text (Standard), Hyperlink URL (Hyperlink), or Browse… for a file (Document). Delete (existing) · OK · Cancel. Creating, editing and deleting are fully saved to the database (the source CRM sees them).

On the web portal

Knowledge Base has its own master-detail workspace, reached two ways: directly from a bookmarked or ribbon-linked /knowledge-base/ URL, or from inside Library's own page via the View dropdown (Chapter 17) — the same rows either way, matching the desktop where the Knowledge Base panel lives inside the Company Library window. If your security group denies Knowledge Base specifically, both doors are closed; denying Library does not affect this one, because the two are separate permissions.

Columns are Title, Category, Views, Tags and Date; every column but Tags sorts on the server (a list of tags is not something MongoDB can usefully put in order, so that column heading does not offer to). The article count next to the title is the real total, and paging and Show all work as described in Chapter 20. Quick Search matches the title, the summary and the body.

The toolbar carries two filters: Status (All / Draft / Published / Archived) and Category (All Categories, then every category the create/edit form offers). Four stat chips above the list — All / Published / Draft / Archived — always show the workspace-wide count, independent of whichever filter is currently narrowing the rows below them.

Add an article from the ribbon: Home ▸ Create ▸ Knowledge Base Article, or its drop-down ▸ Standard Article — both open the new-article form (Title, Summary, Content, Category, Status, Tags and a Make visible to clients tick). ▸ Document Article answers "the 'Document Article' function has not been connected yet.", because a document article's body is an attached file and the web portal cannot store one yet.

Three more ribbon shortcuts land you on the list pre-filtered: View ▸ Knowledge Base ▸ All Articles, ▸ Draft and ▸ Published each set the Status dropdown to match, so you can always see which filter is running. Expired and Internal say they are not connected — those two statuses exist on the desktop but cannot be stored on the web, so a button claiming to filter by them would quietly show you everything. Use the Status dropdown's Archived for articles you have retired.

Search

Search Articles ("Search by Any Field"): Article #, Status, Creator, Title, Keywords, Products/Services, Categories, and Modify current knowledge base list (Add / Narrow / Replace) with a Retrieve limit. Matching is "contains", case-insensitive; in this release the list is always replaced with the results. Article # searches the number exactly as the list and preview show it (FP-KB00042) — because matching is "contains", typing just the digits (42) finds it too.

Linking an article to a service ticket

A service ticket can name the article that solved it: on the ticket's Solution / Billing tab, Related knowledge base article ▸ Browse… picks one, and Details… opens it again later (Chapter 4). The ticket stores and shows the article's FP-KB… number — the same number this chapter's list and preview show — so both screens always quote the same reference. Typing just the digits (42) into the ticket's Article # box finds FP-KB00042 as well.

Not yet available

Add/Narrow result modes; article-to-case usage tracking and expiry automation. The Send Email window's address options (current entry / all entries) and save copy / log note boxes are collected but not yet acted on — the composer opens addressed to nobody, for you to fill in.