Create, Publish and Search a Knowledge Base Article

[Applies to: Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011]

During a lifecycle, a knowledge base article can be in the following states:

  • Draft (after an article is created)

  • Unapproved (during editing)

  • Published (after an article is published)

To change the state of the knowledge base article, use the SetStateRequest message. For early bound types, use the KbArticleState enumeration to set the possible states.

Create and Publish a Knowledge Base Article

When you create a knowledge base article, you have to associate it with a knowledge base template and a subject. A knowledge base template describes the sections and formatting for the article. Subjects are used to organize the articles by business categories that are also used to group cases (incidents), sales literature, and products. A best practice is to create a subject tree hierarchy and all necessary knowledge base templates before you create an article.

noteNote
Microsoft Dynamics CRM provides several knowledge base templates. They include Standard KB Article, Solution to a Problem, Procedure, and other templates. The recommended method of creating knowledge base article templates is by using the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Web application. If you want to create a knowledge base article template programmatically, use existing knowledge base article templates as examples of what information to include and how to format the data.

To associate an article with a template, use the KbArticle. KbArticleTemplateId attribute. To place an article in a specific category by specifying a subject, use the KbArticle.SubjectId attribute.

Specify the title of the article and the keywords that you want to use in the search. To describe an article you can use the KbArticle.Description attribute. To add the content for the article, use the KbArticle.Content attribute. Use the Kbarticle.ArticleXml attribute to add the XML data for article. The KbArticle.LanguageCode value is obtained from the template to help you write the queries that sort the articles by the language.

When an article is created it is saved as a Draft. After that you can change the state of the article from Draft to Unapproved. You can modify the content of an Unapproved article and make it ready for publishing. When the article is ready to be published, change the state from Unapproved to Published.

An unpublished article obtains the format settings from a template. If you change a template format, the changes are automatically propagated to the articles in the Draft and Unapproved states.

After you publish an article, you can add comments (KbArticleComment), but you cannot edit it, regardless of your privileges.

noteNote
The comments can be added to the article in any state: Draft, Unapproved or Published.

If you must revise or update the article, you have to unpublish it. To unpublish an article, change the state of the article from Published to Unapproved. You can remove the article from the Microsoft Dynamics CRM database by deleting it. To delete an article, change the state of the article from Published to Unapproved or Draft. A knowledge base article cannot be deleted, if it is in the Published state.

Search for a Knowledge Base Article

You can search Microsoft Dynamics CRM published knowledge base articles. You can build queries to search articles by titles, full-text, subject and article number.

In the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Web application, you can search for a knowledge base article in two locations:

  • Service

  • Workplace

Click Articles in the left navigation pane, and select the search type.

See Also

Other Resources

Knowledge Base Entities

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011
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