The Knowledge Base feature enables support teams to centralize and manage information efficiently, enhancing both agent productivity and customer experience.
Consistency in responses : Agents have access to a centralized repository of solutions, ensuring standardized and accurate responses across the team.
Self-Service for contacts: End users (contacts) can easily find answers to common issues without needing to raise tickets. This empowers users and reduces dependency on the support team.
Reduced ticket volume: By enabling self-service and surfacing relevant knowledge base articles during ticket submission, the number of incoming support requests is significantly lowered.
Contextual article suggestions: When users do raise tickets, Freshservice suggests relevant articles, allowing issues to be resolved faster, sometimes even before agent involvement.
Knowledge Base Hierarchy
An organized Knowledge Base ensures users and agents can quickly find accurate information. You can structure your content using the following hierarchy:
Category: Serves as the top-level container within the knowledge base. It can contain folders, sub-folders, and individual solution articles. Visibility for a category is set at the client level, making it suitable for organizing content across broader topics such as Hardware, Software, or Network Support.
Folder: Created within a category and functions as the root container for related content. Each folder can contain up to ten sub-folders and a collection of articles. Visibility for folders is defined at the agent group level, allowing for targeted access control based on team responsibilities.
Sub-folders: Created within folders and can contain solution articles but cannot be nested further. Visibility settings are inherited from their parent folder, maintaining consistency in access permissions throughout the folder structure.
Create a new category
Categories help classify your knowledge base into major topics or business segments. For example, you can create a category for Hardware containing all articles about printers, drives, peripherals.
Note: Deleting a category will also delete all folders and articles it contains.
Follow these steps to create a new category:
Go to the Solutions tab.
Click Add New and select Category.
Enter a category name and description.
Click Save.
Create a new folder
Folders help users access related solutions quickly and improve knowledge base navigation. Follow these steps to create a new folder:
Go to the Solutions tab.
Click Add New and select Folder.
Enter a folder name and description.
Select the desired category where the folder should be created.
On the Managed By field, search and select the Agent Groups that can create, edit, and manage the solutions added to particular Folders.
Note: Only Agents who have permissions to create/edit a Category or Folder can add Agent Group(s) within a Folder. You can set up these options under Permissions and Scope for Agent Roles.Select if the folder is applicable to:
All clients- Applies to all clients available in your account
Specific clients - Select the required clients from the Clients filed.
Select the visibility level:
All users - All contacts and agents including public users
Logged In users - Users who have logged in to your service desk.
All agents - All Agents in your service desk.
Agents Groups - Agents who belong to specific Agent Groups.
Contact Groups - Contact who belong to specific Contact Groups.
Select Assign Approvers checkbox if you want to assign approvers for the article.
Select one of the approval rules:
All Approvers: Every assigned approver must approve the article.
Anyone Can Approve/Reject: Any one approver can approve or reject the article.
Click Save.
Create a Solution article
You can use solution articles to provide step-by-step resolutions, FAQs, or troubleshooting guidance. Follow these steps:
Note: Articles visibility on self service portal will be inherited by the parent Folder.
Go to the Solutions tab in the left panel.
Click Create an Article.
Enter a title and add content using the rich text editor.
(Optional) Click Attach files > browse and select the file > click Open to upload the file.
Select the desired folder and category where the article should be created.
Select the type of article:
Permanent - Use this tag for articles that completely resolves the underlying Problem by eliminating its root cause.
Workaround - Use this tag when you have to fix the user's issue until a permanent solution can be implemented.
Add relevant tags and keywords to improve searchability.
Click Save.
Click Publish if you want to publish the saved article.
Create article using external URL
Freshservice allows you to link external articles directly in your knowledge base, enabling users to search and access official documentation from other platforms—without leaving your support portal.
How to add an external article
To link an external URL to your knowledge base:
Go to the Solutions tab.
Under the Add New menu, select Article from External URL.
Enter the required details:
Title: The name that will appear in your knowledge base.
URL: The external documentation link.
Category and Folder: Select where this link should appear in your structure.
Tags and Keywords: Add terms to help surface the article in search.
Click Save.
After saving, the system will analyze the external web page and index its content for keyword-based search results. The content itself is not stored within the knowledge base. Instead, search results are matched based on the information found on the linked page.
If the external page requires a login to view, the system will rely on the title, tags, and keywords provided during setup to make the article discoverable through search.
Note: External URLs may take up to 24 hours to be indexed in Freshservice's search engine.
