Knowledge Management is the practice that increases service desk resolution rates, and improves technical skills and everyone’s experience. Done well, a shared knowledge base will help technical teams and end-users. In this sense, knowledge base articles are a great way to build a library that provides valuable insights into how things work.
By giving access to these articles, we are spreading resourceful information (a great asset!) across the organization. Hence, having a knowledge base brings:
- Informed decisions
- Improved efficiency because there will be no need to rediscover knowledge
- A better understanding of the context and interaction with the knowledge consumer
Let's take a look at how you can use and write knowledge base articles to take your operations to the next level.
Key takeaways
- A knowledge base article that reduces tickets has a clear structure, a task-oriented title, and steps users can follow without assistance from an agent.
- Integrating the knowledge base with the self-service portal increases its impact: the article needs to be available where users are already looking for answers.
- AI speeds up the entire content lifecycle, from generating the initial draft to identifying articles that are underperforming and need updates.
Knowledge base article definition
A knowledge base article is a document designed to provide users with helpful information about a product or service. It often includes answers to common questions, troubleshooting steps, and practical tips for resolving everyday issues.
They can be used in many different ways, such as:
- Helping others understand how something works.
- Providing instructions for how to do something.
- Sharing tips, best practices, and other helpful information.
Individual articles are organized into a knowledge base, making information easier to search and reuse. Knowledge Management covers the processes behind that content, including creating, reviewing, updating, and retiring articles as information changes.
A knowledge base also preserves organizational knowledge. Documenting solutions and procedures means teams don't have to rely on one person's experience or recreate the same answer each time an issue comes up. Employees and customers can use the same knowledge resources to find answers, follow procedures, and resolve common issues independently.
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Types of knowledge base articles
Different knowledge needs call for different article formats. Choosing the right type helps keep content focused and makes it easier for users to find the information they need.
- Informative articles: Explain a system, feature, process, or concept when the reader needs to understand how something works. They can cover available options, key behaviors, requirements, or other context without necessarily guiding the reader through a specific task.
- How-to articles: Provide step-by-step instructions for completing a specific task. They work well for actions such as logging in, changing a password, configuring a feature, or submitting a request. Keep the scope narrow enough that the reader can follow the procedure without sorting through unrelated information.
- Troubleshooting articles: Help users diagnose and resolve a defined problem. A good troubleshooting article describes the symptoms or error, identifies likely causes when useful, and provides one or more resolution paths. Each article should focus on a specific issue so users can quickly determine whether it applies to their situation.
- Frequently asked questions (FAQ) articles: Bring together recurring questions about a product, service, process, or policy. Questions should reflect the terminology users actually use, with concise answers that address the specific point being asked. For example, an e-commerce knowledge base might cover questions about order status, shipping times, returns, and account management.
Knowledge base article templates
Knowledge base article templates are a great way to create content for your organization's knowledge base. These templates are designed to be flexible and customizable, so you can use them for any topic or industry. You can also change the layout and design of the template to match your company's branding.
Keep in mind that, if you need some assistance to fill them with content, you can check out these tips to write good knowledge base articles.
Informational article template
How-to article template
Troubleshooting article template
FAQ article template
How to write knowledge base articles users will actually use
Most knowledge base articles fail for a simple reason: they are written from the support team's perspective instead of the user's. Users are usually trying to complete a task or solve a problem quickly. They are not interested in learning internal terminology, system architecture, or policy details unless those details help them reach a solution.
Step 1: Start with the title. Analyze ticket subjects, chat transcripts, and search queries to identify the exact language users use when reporting issues. An article titled "VPN Authentication Failure Resolution" is less likely to be found than one called "Can't connect to the VPN."
Step 2: The first few lines matter more than most teams realize. Before presenting any steps, briefly state what problem the article solves and when users should follow it. This helps them confirm they have found the right content before investing time in the instructions.
Keep procedures highly specific:
- One action per step.
- Place the expected result immediately after important actions.
- Include exact button names, menu paths, and field labels.
- Write instructions in the order they appear on screen.
- Avoid combining multiple actions into a single numbered step.
Also, reduce unnecessary decision points. If users must choose between multiple paths, separate them clearly instead of embedding conditions inside a long paragraph.
Step 3: Add troubleshooting directly where users are likely to get stuck. Rather than creating a separate FAQ section, insert short notes such as: "If you don't see the Reset Password option, contact your local administrator." This keeps users moving forward without forcing them to scroll through the article.
Step 4: Before publishing, test the article with someone unfamiliar with the process. Ask them to follow the instructions without assistance. Any question they ask is usually evidence that a step is missing, unclear, or assumes prior knowledge.
Step 5: Finally, review article performance regularly. Articles with high view counts and low ticket deflection often indicate that users are finding the content but not resolving their issue. Those articles should be prioritized for revision before creating new content.
6 best practices for writing knowledge base articles
Getting your ideas and strategy sorted is always the most difficult part when writing a condensed piece of information. That is why we are presenting you some of the best practices to consider so you don’t leave anything to the imagination of your readers.
1. Start where you are
Before reinventing the wheel, look at the knowledge you already have. There’s often lots of useful information hiding in places like incident resolution logs in your ITSM tool, software maintenance documents, or hardware setup guides.
Use all the existing content you can retrieve as a foundation for your articles. It will save time, and you'll rest assured that the knowledge base reflects what your team is already using to solve problems.
How InvGate helps: With the Knowledge Article Creation feature, you can surface past resolutions directly from tickets and turn them into draft articles.
2. Focus on recurring issues first
If you're looking for a good place to start, tap into your most common support tickets. What are the things you get asked to fix day in and day out? No matter your organization type, you will always be asked about network, email, and desktop issues.
Make sure you capture that content and have the service restoration documents with screenshots and diagrams to make them easy to follow.
How InvGate helps: Identify common issues through reporting and prioritize them for documentation.
3. Get inspired by user questions to drive content
You’ve looked at the most frequently logged break/fix incidents. Now, let’s look at service requests and customer questions to add value. Use the customer’s own words to capture the question and explain the answer to focus on what the customer needs.
Also, add links to related articles and content to drive traffic to the right places. Look for opportunities to be proactive, for example, creating FAQs for new services that will be released soon.
As Brian Skramstad (IT Service Management Principal at Allianz Technology) said on the 17th episode of our podcast, Ticket Volume, it is always a good idea to do user experience research in order to identify problems.
4. Encourage contributions from the team
Make your support teams your biggest champions of Knowledge Management by making the submission of quality articles that are worth their while. Whether it’s a dashboard that highlights the top authors or an Amazon voucher for the best submission of the month, incentivize people to submit knowledge articles so that you get a variety of content.
How InvGate helps: Track contributions and article performance, and use gamification to reinforce that behavior. You can assign points for agents that create new articles, have entries marked as helpful, and receive high ratings on their content.
5. Create knowledge articles for self-help
There’s no point in having great knowledge articles if no one uses them. Have a central place to share knowledge such that your content is visible to all. Make sure your knowledge articles are easy to find and labeled accordingly.
How InvGate helps: The self-service portal gives users direct access to relevant articles, while the Virtual Service Agent delivers answers in a conversational format. You can also suggest or make mandatory reading specific articles based on the request category, helping users review potential solutions before submitting a ticket.
6. Make knowledge sharing part of daily work
Make it easy for your people to create and share knowledge articles and build a culture such that it becomes second nature for everyone in IT. The more a Knowledge Management strategy becomes part of the day job, the more articles you generate, and the potential for helping other support teams and ultimately end customers increases exponentially.
How InvGate helps: Knowledge article creation is an option embedded into the ticket management area and AI-assisted, so documenting solutions becomes routine.
How to create a knowledge base article in InvGate Service Management
Creating knowledge in InvGate Service Management isn’t limited to a single “write and publish” flow. Teams can generate, refine, and reuse content from different points in their daily work, which makes knowledge capture more consistent and easier to maintain over time.
1. Create articles manually
You can always create articles from scratch when documenting a new process, service, or known issue. The editor allows you to structure content with clear sections, add images, and include links to related resources.
Before publishing, you define:
- Categories to organize content and make it easier to find, as well as connect it to your service catalog, so the right content is recommended to users.
- Permissions to control who can view or edit the article.
- Status (draft, review, published) to manage its lifecycle.
This approach works well for planned documentation, such as onboarding guides or standard procedures.
2. Use workflows for knowledge article creation
You can also use workflows when agents want to propose new articles, especially if you need more control over what gets published.
Instead of letting anyone create content directly in the knowledge base, a knowledge base workflow in InvGate can add structure to the process. It guides the article through drafting, review, and approval before it goes live.
A simple approach could look like this:
- An agent submits a form with the proposed article (title, content, visibility).
- The article goes into a review step, where someone checks accuracy and clarity.
- If changes are needed, it’s sent back to the author for edits.
- Once approved, it’s published as either public or internal content.
You can add more steps depending on how strict you want the process to be. For example, include multiple reviewers, restrict who can approve publication, or require certain fields before moving forward.
3. AI-assisted article creation from closed tickets
InvGate can analyze closed tickets and generate draft knowledge base articles automatically, using the issue details, context, and resolution steps already captured. It helps teams move faster from one-off fixes to documented knowledge without starting from scratch.
Treat AI-generated content as a first version. Before publishing, review it to confirm the solution is accurate and tested, adjust the wording so it’s clear for non-technical users, add any missing context or edge cases, align the tone with your organization, and include screenshots or formatting where needed to make the steps easier to follow.
4. Knowledge Snippets as a complementary layer
InvGate Service Management offers the Knowledge Snippets feature to capture small, reusable pieces of knowledge without requiring a full article.
In this case, AI identifies patterns in tickets and surfaces candidate snippets based on repeated solutions and responses. Instead of agents having to spot these manually, the system highlights potential knowledge worth capturing.
Teams will review those suggestions, decide if they’re accurate and useful, and choose how they should be used — whether for internal agent support, end-user responses, or both.
Once approved, snippets become available to support AI-driven features like solution recommendations for agents and answers provided by the Virtual Service Agent. Knowledge snippets won't be part of your knowledge base and are not something users browse directly; they’re applied in context when needed.
Snippets work alongside your knowledge base. Articles remain the place for structured, fully developed documentation, while snippets allow faster capture of smaller insights.
They support Knowledge Management more broadly. Since AI depends on having relevant and up-to-date information, snippets help keep that layer current by turning everyday support activity into usable knowledge.
If you want to see how this works in practice, you can try InvGate Service Management with a 30-day free trial.
How do you measure knowledge base article performance?
Measuring performance comes down to understanding two things: whether articles are being used, and whether they actually help solve issues. That means looking at both consumption (are people finding them?) and outcomes (do they work?).
In InvGate Service Management, you can assess this directly from the knowledge base by filtering and reviewing articles. These are some of the dimensions you can base your revisions on:
- Views: How many times the article has been accessed.
- Solved requests: How often a suggested article actually resolved the issue and contributed to ticket deflection.
- Rating: Average user satisfaction (1–5 stars).
- Useful / not useful marks: Direct feedback when articles are suggested.
- Last viewed: When the article was last accessed, to identify stale content.
- Attached to requests: How often agents use the article to resolve tickets.
Looking at these together helps you identify which articles to improve, which ones to retire, and where new content is needed.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do you maintain knowledge base articles over time?
Review articles regularly and update them when products, processes, or policies change. Track outdated or low-use content, assign ownership, and set review dates for articles that require ongoing maintenance.
How long should a knowledge base article be?
There is no fixed word count. An article should contain enough information to answer the question or complete the task without adding unnecessary detail. For procedural content, concise steps are usually easier to follow than long explanations.
How do you write a knowledge base article?
Start with a specific user need and choose the format that fits it, such as a how-to, troubleshooting guide, or FAQ. Use a clear title, concise language, logical sections, and actionable steps, then review the article for accuracy before making it available.
