Knowledge Base administration

SECURITY  Security level with Admin permissions for Knowledge Base & Documentation. Refer to Admin security settings.

NAVIGATION   > Admin > Automation > Knowledge Base & Documentation > Knowledge Base

As an Autotask Administrator, you set up and manage your local organization's knowledge base from the Manage Knowledge Base page. To open the page, use the path(s) in the Security and navigation section above.

Task bar

Option Description

New Article

Click to add a new article to your knowledge base. Refer to Adding and editing Knowledge Base articles.

Search Knowledge Base

Click to launch the Knowledge Base search page. Refer to Searching and managing Knowledge Base articles.

Click to launch the Import Articles page. Refer to Importing knowledge base articles.

General tab

The columns of the summary tables show the number of articles or documents by Publish Type and Approval Status. The aggregate numbers are hyperlinks, and clicking them will show the search results for the selected criteria.

NOTE   Inactive articles and documents remain in the knowledge base, but are accessible only to users with an Administrator security level.

The articles and documents are summarized as follows:

Field Description
Article or Document Visibility by Publish Type
All Publish Types (articles only) All articles in your knowledge base
Internal & All Organizations All articles or documents published to All Autotask Users
Internal Only All articles or documents published to internal resources only
Internal & Organization All articles or documents published to internal resources plus one named organization
Internal & Classification (articles only) All articles published to internal resources plus one named organization classification
Internal & Territory (articles only) All articles published to internal resources plus the selected territory

Articles (or Documents) by Approval Status
Published The article or document has been approved and published, and currently, no draft exists.
Draft Pending Approval A draft has been submitted for review and approval.
Draft in Progress A draft has been created for a previously approved document/article, but approval has not been requested.
New Draft A new article or document that has never been submitted for approval or published was saved as a draft.

The Categories tab

Categories are used to organize and classify articles and documents. During searches, categories allow you to narrow the focus of your search, which will return a smaller number of more relevant content items.

Categories exist in a tree structure, sorted alphabetically by name. The numbers next to the category name show the number of active and inactive pieces of content in the category, including the articles and documents in all subcategories. The root category All Articles or All Documents appears by default, and cannot be edited or deleted. You can have up to three additional levels of subcategories below the root category.

NOTE  Knowledge Base only: below the All Articles category, a Global subcategory appears. This category contains global knowledge base articles that are available to all Autotask customers. It contains a Datto BCDR sub-folder where the Datto BCDR knowledge base articles have been published. refer to About global knowledge base articles.

  1. Navigate to > Admin > Automation > Knowledge Base & Documentation > Documentation or Knowledge Base > Categories tab.
  2. Click New or, to add a sub-category to an existing category, select Add Sub-category from the context menu of the parent category.  The New Document Category dialog box opens. 
  3. Complete the following fields:
Field Name Description
Name Enter a name for the new category.
Description Enter an optional description for the new category.
Parent Category The selected category is displayed as the parent category. Accept the category or, to change it, click the selector icon next to the field and pick a different category as the parent category. Refer to Data selector windows.
  1. Click Save & Close.  The new category will appear indented below its parent category.
Menu Option Description
Edit Category Edit the category.
Copy Make a copy of the category. The Parent Category and Description fields will be copied, but the sub-categories and article or document associations will not.
Add Sub-category Add a sub-category under the selected category.
Delete Delete the category. If you delete a parent category, all sub-categories will also be deleted. Any document associations will be removed, and the documents will be associated with the parent category of the removed category.

The root category (All Documents) cannot be deleted.