Knowledge base: categories, versions, approval, languages and analytics

Your knowledge base already had drafts, review, publication, feedback and a public help center. This article covers the lifecycle layer around it: how articles are organized, how a change is compared and restored, how publication can go through an approval chain, how an article lives in several lang

Your knowledge base already had drafts, review, publication, feedback and a public help center. This article covers the lifecycle layer around it: how articles are organized, how a change is compared and restored, how publication can go through an approval chain, how an article lives in several languages, how agents use articles inside a case, how to import an existing base and what the numbers mean.

Categories and topics Open Knowledge base and the Taxonomy tab. Categories form a tree of up to four levels. Each article sits on one branch (choose it in the article editor, under Category and topics). The public help center shows the tree with the number of published articles per branch and hides a branch that has no published article. A category can be deactivated when you no longer want new articles in it; it cannot be deleted while it still has subcategories or articles, so the tree never loses a branch by accident. Give each category a label per language if your readers use more than one; without a label, the base name is shown. Topics are normalized tags with identity: Password and password are the same topic. Readers can browse by topic in the help center.

Related articles In the article editor, Related articles lists what is linked to this article and suggests similar articles by text. Link them as Related, Read first or Next step. Links are editorial: the suggestion never becomes a link by itself. Linked articles that are published appear at the end of the public article.

Versions and comparing Every submission for review saves a version, and you can save one at any time. Compare with current shows what changed line by line between a saved version and the text as it is now, with the number of added and removed lines. Restore brings that content back and saves a new version, so the history is never overwritten.

Publication through an approval chain By default, publication goes to the review queue, where an administrator approves. If your workspace needs several approvers, delegation or a deadline, create an approval policy of type kb_article in Approvals. From then on, Request publication opens a request in the approval engine; the article goes live only when the chain approves it, and the person who requested it receives a notification either way. Requesting twice does not open two chains. Publications waiting on a chain are listed at the top of the Review tab.

Languages An article can exist in several languages, linked as one group. In the editor, under Languages, choose a target language and use Translate with AI. The translation is created as a draft, in the same review and publication flow as any article: nothing is published automatically, and AI usage is metered like any other. When a reader opens an article and a published version exists in their language, the page offers it; the other published languages are listed at the end of the article.

Articles inside a case In the agent console, the reply composer has a Knowledge base panel: articles suggested by the subject of the case, articles that helped resolve cases of the same category, and what was already used in this case. Insert places the title, an excerpt and the public link into the reply. An internal article is inserted without a link, because the customer cannot open it. Each use is recorded, and that record is what feeds the ranking of articles that resolve each type of case.

Importing articles The Import tab accepts CSV and Markdown. In CSV, the header needs at least title and body; category, tags, topics, locale, status and source_url are optional. In Markdown, each article starts with a level-one heading or with a front matter block. Preview first: it tells you what will be created, what already exists (same title and language) and which rows have errors. Everything is created as a draft. Pasting the same file twice does not duplicate anything. A category name that is not one of the standard values becomes a branch in the tree.

Analytics The Analytics tab combines reads per article and per entry point (help center, portal, agent console), reads per day, the deflection rate, searches and questions that found no article, articles used by agents in cases, and production in the period. Two numbers are deliberately kept apart: deflection counts only visits that declared the problem solved (opening a case always wins), while the list of articles present in solved visits shows which articles were read in those visits. Reading is not the same as solving, and the screen says so.

Review reminders When an article has an owner and a review cycle, the owner receives a notification when the review date passes, once per due date. Marking the article as reviewed schedules the next one.

What is not included A community forum per workspace is not part of the knowledge base. Automatic translation is never published without a person reviewing it.

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