Creating a knowledge base in SharePoint Online

Knowledge management is the process of creating, sharing, using and managing the knowledge and information of an organisation. The main aim of knowledge management is to achieve organisational objectives by making the best use of an organisation’s knowledge.

A collection of information about a product, service, business process, department, or topic is called a knowledge base. In this article we will have a look at out-of-the-box SharePoint Online features that can be utilised for building a knowledge base.

Custom list

A SharePoint list can be easily setup as a knowledge base. The functionality of a SharePoint list allows you to:

• add your own metadata columns to match the content of your knowledge base and categorise it the way it serves your users
• use sorting, grouping, and filtering to create views and provide different browsing options
• format the list to add some visual interest
• add many items to the list (the technical limit is 30 million items)
• collect and present in one place different types of content (documents, files, web pages)
• consolidate knowledge from different systems in one place by adding links to content stored outside of SharePoint
• add governance elements such as publication and review date, ownership details, and expiry date
• use search within the list
• have version control and recycle bin recovery.

Minimal effort is required to set up a knowledge base with a SharePoint list. You can start collecting knowledge pieces immediately and add features to your knowledge base as it grows and matures.

Published pages

The second option is to create knowledge articles and publish them as individual pages, like Wikipedia. This option provides great flexibility for presenting content as you can add text, images, videos, links, etc.

In addition, you can utilise modern SharePoint page layouts and web parts to make content easier to consume. Here are some examples:

• Collapsible sections – lets you add large volumes of information to the page and provides an easy overview of the content (great for FAQs).

• List web part – use this web part when you need to present information in a table format; it’s more flexible and user friendly than a simple text-based table. It lets you group, sort and filter information right on the page or pre-set a view. One list can be added to multiple pages.

• Highlighted content web part – this web part lets you surface content from one or multiple locations based on a selected criteria (for example, a keyword, metadata tag, or file type). You can also make content more user-specific by enabling audience targeting.

Using pages in your knowledge base requires good navigation as important content can be easily lost if users struggle to locate it. You can help users orientate themselves and understand knowledge categories by creating custom metadata and displaying it on a page.

There are also some governance tools available. A custom page template can be easily created to provide a consistent look and feel for every page. A publishing approval workflow can be set up for the ‘Pages’ library as well as a review and archival process.

The downside of building a page-based knowledge base is that it requires significant effort to get started. Writing and publishing good quality content is time consuming and requires knowledge and skills as well as ongoing governance to ensure relevancy and quality of content is maintained over time.

Conclusion

SharePoint Online provides different tools for helping capture and manage knowledge. There is no one-size-fits-all solution when it comes to organisational knowledge management. Planning and analysis are required to understand the nature of knowledge, its lifecycle, and user skills so that you can design and build a solution that is easy to use and maintain.