Solution articles or knowledge base posts promote self-help in your support portal. They should ideally cover all aspects of your product or service - in the example of an e-commerce store, their knowledge base articles would probably include payment instructions, shipping information, and product return policies.
Need some help on how to come up with a perfect Knowledge Base article? Click here!
Freshdesk knowledge base is categorized into a three-level hierarchy - Categories that hold a group of related content, Folders under each category, and the specific Solution Articles inside each folder.
You can use Flexible Hierarchy to structure your knowledge base with additional categories or sub-folders up to 5 levels. Click here to read more.
Note: Flexible hierarchy is available only on the Enterprise plan. If you are on other plans, you can organize your knowledge base up to 3 levels. Category > Folder > Article.
At the top level, Categories broadly classify your solutions page into several sections. For example, you could place Shipping, Payments, and delivery-related information under the Order Fulfillment category. Another interesting application of this organizational system is when you're providing support across multiple brands or products (more about multi-product support here).
Related solution articles are organized into Folders. Folders make it convenient for users to read similar articles and other possible solutions to their problems. For example, you would club solutions related to tracking codes and postal services under the Shipping folder.
The number next to each folder indicates the total number of folders and solution articles combined within that specific folder.
Here's how to go about setting up your Knowledge Base:
Creating a Category
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Go to Solutions > New Category.
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Enter an appropriate name and description for the category.
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Hit Save for saving the category
You can also choose to edit a Category or a Folder name by hovering over it and clicking on the Edit icon.
Creating a Folder
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Go to Solutions > New Folder under the category in which you wish to create a folder.
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Enter an appropriate name and description for the folder you are about to create.
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Choose the visibility for this folder:You can choose to make the folder visible to all, only to logged-in users, agents, or bots depending on your requirements You can go further and make it only visible to specific companies by entering their names.
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After selecting the hierarchy level of your folder, you can choose to order them manually or auto-sort them based on alphabetical order, creation date, or modified date.
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You can also choose to make your folders available on your chat platforms and choose between web widgets, iOS, or Android. You can also add tags to your folders to filter them and deliver a personalized experience to your customers.
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Once you're done setting up the above, click on Save.
Creating an Article
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Go to Solutions > New Article.
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Name the article.
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You can write the article and format the content in the rich text editor or using the HTML editor.
Note: The following tags will not be supported in the HTML editor: <script>, <style>; form-related tags like <form>, <input>, <select> and event attributes like onclick, onmouseover
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Attach a file if required by clicking on Attach. You can also drag and drop the file into the content creation space on the left pane of the New Article page, to attach the file.
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Mention the keywords under tags for the article to show up when a customer searches for a particular keyword.
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Choose the folder from the available dropdown menu under which you wish to list this solution article.
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Freshdesk also lets you customize their meta information. That way, you could optimize your knowledge base for search engines and make sure that they rank better on Google. More information on optimizing your solution articles for search engines is available here.
Once you fill this up, click on Save if you still need to work on it. This will save the article as a draft and will be available in your drafts folder. Click on Publish if you wish to publish the solution article.
You can learn about deleting a category, folder, and/or article, here.