Chapter at a Glance
In the previous chapter, you learned how to manage service requests in Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Whether your organization tracks the questions, comments, and problems submitted by your customers as cases in Microsoft Dynamics CRM or elsewhere, over time there will probably be common themes or patterns in the service requests. This should make recurring cases easier to resolve, but often the organizational knowledge collected in service requests is lost in the sheer volume of cases managed by each representative. Another challenge in retaining experience and organizational knowledge on customer service teams is the high turnover common on many teams.
Beyond quantitative analysis of case-related metrics—such as the number of cases per customer or the average time it takes to resolve a case—customer service teams can benefit from a qualitative repository of case summaries, whittled down to include the information that will help the team respond to future service requests quickly and accurately. Combined, the qualitative and quantitative stores of data can become a powerful source for improving service to customers and driving sales, marketing, and product development processes to better meet customers’ needs.
In this chapter, you’ll learn how to build a knowledge base—a collection of articles in Microsoft Dynamics CRM that can be referenced by customer service representatives when they are answering questions about an organization’s products or services. Articles are text based and can include product user guides, summaries of recurring problems and their solutions, and frequently asked questions (FAQs) assembled by the customer service team. Any information that can be used to quickly answer questions from customers, prospects, and other parties can be stored in your organization’s knowledge base.
Like service request cases, knowledge base articles are assigned a subject, tying knowledge base articles to the same business categories used to group other sales and service records in Microsoft Dynamics CRM. For articles, subjects also provide the user with a quick way to search for information on a particular topic, even if the specific article title is not known. Because a subject value is required for each article, you should make sure that your subject tree is configured before you create an article. For assistance with creating the subject tree in your Microsoft Dynamics CRM environment, contact your system administrator.
Note
See Also For more information about subject trees, see the Configuring the Subject Tree sidebar in Chapter 10.
Tip
Although many fields can be marked as optional instead of required in Microsoft Dynamics CRM forms, the Article form cannot be modified. However, during the installation process, a “default subject” value is created in the subject tree. You can select this default subject value on articles prior to configuring your subject tree, if necessary.
A well-organized knowledge base can reduce the amount of time customer service representatives spend searching for answers and reference documents on behalf of customers.
In this chapter, you’ll learn how to build a knowledge base by creating, publishing, searching for, and modifying articles in Microsoft Dynamics CRM.
Important
The images used in this book reflect the default form and field names in Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Because the software offers extensive customization capabilities, it’s possible that some of the record types or fields have been relabeled in your Microsoft Dynamics CRM environment. If you cannot find the forms, fields, or security roles referred to in this book, contact your system administrator for assistance.
Important
You must know the location of your Microsoft Dynamics CRM website to work the exercises in this book. Check with your system administrator to verify the web address if you don’t know it.
In addition to a subject value, each article contains a title, a list of search keywords, and the content, which varies by article template. You’ll learn more about configuring article templates later in this chapter. For this first exercise, you’ll use one of the templates included with Microsoft Dynamics CRM.
Knowledge base articles are not assigned to customers; instead, the information contained in each article is typically applicable to a subset of customers—or even all customers. In this exercise, you’ll create a new article detailing a product recall and then submit it to the customer service manager for review.
Note
SET UP Use the Windows Internet Explorer web browser to navigate to your Microsoft Dynamics CRM website before beginning this exercise. You need a user account that has the CSR Representative security role or another role with privileges to create, read, and write knowledge base articles.
In the Service area, click Articles to view the knowledge base articles.
On the Articles tab of the ribbon, in the Records group, click the New button.In the dialog box, select the Procedure template and then click OK.
In the Title field in the New Article form, enter Mountain Bike Frame Recall.
In the Subject field, select Default Subject or any other subject in your system.
Note
See Also For more information about subject trees, see the Configuring the Subject Tree sidebar in Chapter 10.
In the Keywords field, enter the following: recall, safety, warranty.
In the article text editor, click the text under the Purpose & Scope section heading and enter the following: SAFETY NOTICE: All 52 Mountain Frames are being recalled due to possible frame failure. For your safety, contact Customer Service or any Adventure Works Cycles dealer if your bike has a size 52 mountain frame.
In the Procedure section, enter the following: Registered customers who provided a warranty card and serial number have received a safety notice about the recall. Bikes can be returned for a replacement frame at any Adventure Works Cycles dealer.
Click the Save button to create the article.Tip
When an article is saved for the first time, it will automatically be assigned an article number. Article auto-numbering can be configured by system administrators in the Administration section of the Settings area. By default, each article will be created with a three-character prefix (KBA), a five-digit code, and a six-character identifier—for example, KBA-01004-P7Q9X3. If you have security rights to modify auto-numbering settings in your Microsoft Dynamics CRM system, you can modify the article prefix applied to each new article.
Click the Submit button in the Actions group on the Article ribbon tab to move the article into
the Unapproved view so that it can be reviewed by a customer
service manager.
After you have created a knowledge base article in Microsoft Dynamics CRM, the article is saved as a draft. When you submit the article, it is moved to an Unapproved article view so it can be reviewed by a customer service manager and either rejected for further revisions or approved into the searchable knowledge base. A knowledge base article cannot be searched by other users before it is published.
When first building your knowledge base, you might ask other members of your team to contribute articles. Microsoft Dynamics CRM allows users with the Customer Service Representative security role to create and submit knowledge base articles; however, additional security privileges are required to approve articles into the Published view, where they can be searched and referenced by other users.
Tip
The Publish Articles security privilege can be modified on the Service tab of any security role. To grant article publishing rights to a user, contact your system administrator.
The submit-and-publish process for articles allows many members of a team to contribute articles, but as a best practice, only a few team members should be able to review the articles and publish them into the knowledge base. Those with publishing rights should be tasked with making the articles as comprehensive and accurate as possible.
In this exercise, you’ll publish the article submitted in the previous section into the knowledge base.
Note
SET UP Use the Internet Explorer web browser to navigate to your Microsoft Dynamics CRM website, if necessary, before beginning this exercise. You need a user account that has the CSR Manager security role or another role with privileges to publish knowledge base articles, and you need the Mountain Bike Frame Recall article you created in the previous exercise.
In the Service area, click Articles.
Select the Unapproved Articles view from the view selector, and then select the mountain bike frame recall article without opening it.
On the Articles tab of the ribbon, in the Actions group, click the Approve button to designate the article as
approved.Change the view back to the Published Articles view and verify that the article is displayed there.
Published articles can be searched for by article text, title, number, or keywords. Additionally, you can browse the subject tree to find all articles for a specific subject. The knowledge base search page can be accessed in two places in Microsoft Dynamics CRM:
In the Service area, by clicking the Articles option in the entity navigation pane and then clicking the Search Tools tab on the ribbon
In the Workplace area, by clicking the Articles option in the entity navigation pane and then clicking the Search Tools tab on the ribbon
From both locations, Microsoft Dynamics CRM provides the options shown in the following table to browse or search for specific articles in the knowledge base in your system.
Search Options | Description |
|---|---|
Full-Text Search | Searches article content based on text you enter. |
Keyword Search | Searches articles by the keyword field that the article author completed. This approach is useful for quickly finding relevant articles, but requires the author to properly complete the keywords field. |
Title Search | Searches article titles based on the text you enter. |
Subject Search | Searches articles based on the subject you enter. |
Article Number Search | Searches based on the article number entered. |
In this exercise, you’ll submit a keyword search to retrieve the bike frame recall article published in the previous exercise.
Note
SET UP Use the Internet Explorer web browser to navigate to your Microsoft Dynamics CRM website, if necessary, before beginning this exercise. You need a user account that has the Customer Service Representative security role or another role with privileges to read subjects and articles, and you need the Mountain Bike Frame Recall article you published in the previous exercise.
In the Service area, click Articles to view the article queue.
As you begin to enter text in the Quick Find search box, the Search Tools ribbon tab displays. Click the
Keyword Search button. Leave the Exact
Words button selected in the Type group.
Back near the Quick
Find field, click the Search button.Tip
The Exact Words option limits your search to those articles that match your keyword exactly. For example, if you enter “recalls” in your search, Microsoft Dynamics CRM will not return an article that has “recall” listed in the keyword field. You can expand your search to include articles with keywords that match a portion of your search terms or a keyword that is similar to your search terms by clicking the Use Like Words button.
Double-click the bike frame recall article in the results pane to view the article. Note that the article is read-only and cannot be edited.
After an article has been published to the knowledge base, it cannot be edited by any users, regardless of their security roles. So what happens when the product guide included in an article is updated or the recall period for a product ends? Articles can be unpublished from the knowledge base for updates or revisions, or they can be removed by being deleted from the database. Each knowledge base article must be in one of the three article views in Microsoft Dynamics CRM—Draft, Unapproved, or Published. Articles can move from one view to another as follows:
Article View | Available Actions to Remove Article from Queue | |
|---|---|---|
Draft | Submit Delete | Moves the article into the Unapproved view for management review Deletes the article record from Microsoft Dynamics CRM |
Unapproved | Reject Approve Delete | Moves the article back to the Draft view for revisions Moves the article to the Published view so it can be searched and referenced by other users Deletes the article record from Microsoft Dynamics CRM |
Published | Unpublish | Removes the article from the active knowledge base and returns it to the Unapproved view |
Tip
The availability of these actions varies based on the security privileges for each user. If you do not see one or more of the above options on the Article form’s ribbon, you might not have the necessary security privileges to perform that action.
Tip
As articles move through each view, users can add comments to indicate updates that need to be made or other notes about the article. The comments are available on a tab of the Article form so that users can quickly reference the notes for each article. However, the comments are not searchable.
In this exercise, you’ll unpublish the article approved in the previous section and assign it back to the Draft view so it can be updated with additional information about the product recall.
Note
SET UP Use the Internet Explorer web browser to navigate to your Microsoft Dynamics CRM website, if necessary, before beginning this exercise. You need the Mountain Bike Frame Recall article created and approved earlier in this chapter.
In the Published Articles view, locate the mountain bike frame recall article.
Select the article and, in the Actions group of the Articles ribbon tab, click the Unpublish button.Click OK to verify that you want to unpublish the article.
Go to the Unapproved Articles view and open the currently unapproved mountain bike frame recall article.
In the Actions group on the Article ribbon tab, click the Reject button to move the article to the Draft view so that a customer service representative can
update it with additional recall information.When the Provide a Reason dialog box appears, enter the following reason for rejecting the article: Update with serial numbers for recall information.
Click OK to reject the article and move it back to the Draft view.
In the Article form, click the Comments tab in the entity navigation pane to verify that the rejection note is displayed in the list, so that the customer service representative knows what updates are needed for the article.
Double-click the comment to view the additional details about why the article was rejected.
Microsoft Dynamics CRM includes several templates for formatting knowledge base articles. Templates typically contain one or two sections, such as a Question section and an Answer section, which provide the people tasked with creating knowledge base articles with content and formatting guidelines for each article type. You might want to add a section to an existing template or even create a custom template to capture knowledge base information specific to your organization. Customer service managers can change section heading names and add instructional text to article templates, as well as modify the font style, size, and color.
For example, assume that the new customer service manager at the bike company wants to make sure that part numbers are included for all product articles. To ensure that this information is included in the knowledge base articles created by the customer service team, the manager will update each template with a new section called Product Number.
In this exercise, you’ll create a new product guide template that includes a section specifically for the product number.
Important
The CSR Manager security role in Microsoft Dynamics CRM has privileges to create and modify article templates. If the role has been altered in your environment or you do not have rights to modify the templates, contact your system administrator. Rights to modify article templates are configured on the Service tab of each security role.
Tip
If you do not want your customer service team to use one of the templates included with Microsoft Dynamics CRM, you can remove the template from the Select A Template dialog box that displays when a new article is created. You do this by deactivating the template. To deactivate a template, click Templates in the Settings page, and then click Article Templates. Select the template you want to remove, and select the Deactivate option in the More Actions menu in the grid toolbar.
Note
SET UP Use the Internet Explorer web browser to navigate to your Microsoft Dynamics CRM website, if necessary, before beginning this exercise. You need a user account that has the CSR Manager security role or another role with privileges to create and update article templates.
In the Settings area, navigate to the Templates section, and then click Article Templates.
On the grid toolbar, click the New button to create a new article
template.In the Article Template Properties dialog box that appears, enter the following values:
Field
Value
Title
Product Guide
Description
Details and location of product guide
Language
English
Click OK. The New Article Template form appears.
In the Common
Tasks pane on the right side of the form, click the
Add a Section button.In the Add a New Section dialog box, enter the following values:
Field
Value
Title
Product Number
Instructions
Specify the product number.
Click OK.
Click the Add a Section button again to add a second section to the template.
In the Add a New Section dialog box, enter the following values:
Field
Value
Title
Product Guide Location
Instructions
Enter the URL for the product guide.
Click OK.
Tip
The instructions entered in the template will be displayed when new articles are created from the template, so use the Instructions field to provide as much detail as possible for the people creating your articles. In addition to listing the desired content in the Instructions field, you might also consider providing sample formatting or other examples.
The knowledge base in Microsoft Dynamics CRM is a store of useful product and service information and other resources relevant to your organization.
One objective of the knowledge base is to capture the collective “know-how” of the customer service team so that it can be easily searched and referenced by other team members when they are answering common customer requests.
Knowledge base articles can include any information that helps customer service representatives provide more timely and accurate customer service. Examples of article content include user guides, data sheets or schematics for products or services, frequently asked questions (FAQs), or summaries of recurring problems and their solutions.
Articles are automatically moved through a workflow as they are published in Microsoft Dynamics CRM. As they are reviewed, articles are moved between three views: Draft, Unapproved, and Published.
Only customer service managers have the right to publish articles into the knowledge base so that they can be searched by other users, but customer service representatives can contribute to the knowledge base by creating and submitting articles for management approval.
Only published articles are available to other members of the organization. Articles with Draft or Unapproved status cannot be searched or accessed by other users.
Knowledge base articles can be searched for by title, keywords, text, subject, and article number. The knowledge base search screen can be accessed from the Workplace or Service pages in Microsoft Dynamics CRM.
Microsoft Dynamics CRM includes several templates that provide a framework for the layout and content of knowledge base articles. Customer service managers can create or modify article templates in the Settings section to tailor them to the requirements of their organization.