We frequently come across a requirement for a "Knowledge Base" that must be part of a proposed solution. ARCHIBUS has the Help files that can be appended and added to but there is no out of the box way for the customer to develop their own knowledge base as they grow with the system. A recent requirement is provided below. MH = Must Have, SH = Should have.

KM01 The Vendor shall describe how the solution establishes, supports and maintains a knowledge base. MH
KM02 The Vendor shall describe how knowledge management is integrated with incident/service management. MH
KM03 The solution shall be able to categorize knowledge base items for access / display by area(s) of designated application. MH
KM04 The solution shall manage versioning to always surface the most current knowledge article version to the consumer. MH
KM05 The Vendor shall describe how the solution utilizes roles and permissions related to managing the knowledge base. MH
KM06 The solution shall have the ability to provide knowledge management capabilities by floating the most relevant hits to the top, in order of closest match to search SH
KM07 The solution shall have the ability to quickly load searches of the knowledge base using categorization (or partial categorization) selections as key value search parameters SH
KM08 The solution shall have the ability to create a knowledge article via a fill-in-the-blank form SH
KM09 The solution shall have the ability to automatically populate a knowledge article into an incident SH
KM10 The solution shall have the ability to support role-based knowledge items (i.e., a technical role can access either technical-facing or customer-facing articles) role-based knowledge item listing by user type. SH
KM11 The ability to automatically create knowledge management entries from incident, problem and change modules DE
KM12 The solution shall have the ability to manage full life cycle of knowledge articles through administration capabilities (e.g., submission, editing, review, approval, publishing, usage monitoring, etc.) MH
KM13 The solution shall have the ability to have a rich-text editor (RTE) that supports links within documents, document-to-document links and attaching images to documents - embed Web links, images and objects into knowledge articles (e.g., screenshots, etc.) MH
KM14 The solution shall have the ability to provide automated administration of the knowledge base - ease of adding, editing and maintaining the data, and ability for end-user submission to require review/approval prior to posting. SH
KM15 The solution shall have the ability to have a defined workflow process for reviewing and approving pending knowledge articles that can be displayed graphically SH
KM16 The solution shall have the ability to make certain fields in the knowledge article template mandatory MH
KM17 The solution shall have the ability to support a variety of search methodologies, including metadata, fuzzy searching, hierarchical/drill-downs, cross-references, attribute queries, category, Web and file system external library searches, and to utilize natural language and proper stemming, and Boolean search methodology SH
KM18 The solution shall have the ability to allow user feedback to rate/score content for usefulness related to the inquiry and track the number of times the article was viewed/referenced. SH
KM19 The solution shall have a quick reference guide providing information on the standards/guidelines governing the knowledge base. SH
KM20 The solution shall have the ability to build, add, modify to a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ’s) database for users and support staff. SH
KM21 The solution shall have the ability to auto suggest solutions based on key words. SH