Lessons · IT support · the knowledge article
The knowledge article: written so the next person finds it and can follow it
A knowledge article turns one fix into everybody's fix. It is titled by the symptom the user would type, and it has four parts: the symptom, the cause, the steps, and how to verify. It is written for the newest person on the desk, not for the person who wrote it.
Hone is a place to practise a career, one idea a day. This is one of its lessons, written out in full and free to read without an account.
What it is for
The third technician this month spends forty minutes on a fault the first one solved. The first one wrote it in a ticket nobody searched. An article titled 'Printer shows offline but is powered on' is found in the first search, and the forty minutes become four. The article is the only way a desk gets faster instead of just bigger.
How to think about it
Title it with the words a user or a technician would search for: the symptom, not the cause. Symptom: what is seen, in one or two lines. Cause: one sentence. Steps: numbered, each one a single action, each with what you should see after it. Verify: the real task that proves it. Then tag it, and link it from the ticket, so the ticket and the article point at each other.
Worked example
Title: 'Printer shows offline, but it is powered on and has paper'Searchable by the symptom. Nobody searches for 'spooler'.
Symptom: the printer is offline on one machine; jobs sit in the queue; the printer's own test page printsWhat is seen, and the one detail that separates this from a dead printer.
Cause: the print spooler service has stopped on the machineOne sentence.
Steps: 1. Open the queue, cancel any job in error. 2. Restart the print spooler service. 3. Print from the user's own applicationNumbered, one action each, and the last one is the verification.
Your turn
Write what the title of a knowledge article is named for, so it can be found by search.
Title the article by the , not the cause
Solve one, graded on the server
The trap
Writing the article for yourself. 'Restart the spooler' is a complete article to the person who knows what a spooler is. The newest person on the desk needs to know where it is and what they should see when it restarts.