2021 KnowledgeBase (KB) User Group Meeting
Every year the KnowledgeBase team and the user community come together with industry experts to share experiences, lessons learned, and best practices. This year our collaborative events took place the week of July 26th-30th, 2021.
If you have any questions please contact kb-team@doit.wisc.edu.
Agenda, Session Recordings, and Resources
Monday, July 26, 2021
| Time | Session Name and Description | Length | Presenter(s) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 9:00 a.m. to 9:45 a.m. CST | Welcome to the 2021 KnowledgeBase (KB) User Group Meeting The KB team will provide a quick overview of the events for this week, how to join them, and methods for connecting with others in the KB user community. Live presentation with Q&A session.
|
45 mins | The KB team |
| 10:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. CST | Understanding the KB Feature Request Process Learn how to submit feature requests to the KB team, how the team manages feature requests, and which features are currently on the roadmap. Live presentation with Q&A session.
|
60 mins | The KB team |
| 11:15 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. CST | How to Measure Your KB’s Success Maya Knotts, student employee for the Help Desk KnowledgeBase, and Dana Gerber-Margie, Help Desk Knowledge Manager, will discuss our 2021 data analytics projects, goals, and process. This presentation will provide tips and insights on how use Tableau, Google Analytics, and the KB existing statistics to determine the effectiveness of Tier 0/Self-Service support. Live presentation with Q&A session.
|
30-45 mins | Maya Knotts and Dana Gerber-Margie |
| 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. CST | Break and Lunch | 60 mins | |
| 1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. CST | Submitting Feature Requests Brainstorm feature requests with other participants and submit those requests to the KB team. Live presentation with Q&A session.
|
60 mins | Laura Grady and the KB team |
| 2:15 p.m. to 2:45 p.m. CST | Answers: the University of Illinois KB Redesign About a year ago the University of Illinois set out to redesign their KB environment. Please join me as I talk about a high-level view of our process, our team, the tools we used to make things go smoother, and what we learned along the way. Live presentation with Q&A session.
|
30 mins | Kevin Merrifield |
Tuesday July 27, 2021
| Time | Session Name and Description | Length | Presenter(s) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10:00 a.m. to 10:45 a.m. CST | Predicting Time-Bound User Needs Using Google Analytics Data Learn how to determine what content is significant to your users during the various periods of your campus’ academic calendar. Attendees will learn techniques to consolidate meaningful Google Analytics data, compare the results with other years, and find patterns that can help guide content strategy. Live presentation with Q&A session.
|
45 mins | Jonathan Dedering |
|
11:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. CST |
Guiding Users to Your Content One of the most important aspects of administrating a KnowledgeBase site is ensuring that your users can quickly and effectively find the information they need. We’ll talk about consistent formatting practices, organizing your information, and how to optimize searchability within the KB. Live presentation with Q&A session.
|
60 mins | Elisabeth Trenta |
| 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. CST | Break and Lunch | 60 mins | |
| 2:15 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. CST | A Demonstration of the New KB Editor and Its' Features Weizhong will demonstrate the features and discuss the intended strategy for testing and rolling out the new editor. Live presentation with Q&A session.
|
45 mins (TBD) |
Weizhong Wang and the KB team |
Wednesday July 28, 2021
| Time | Session Name | Length | Presenter(s) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 11:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. CST | Future Improvements to the KnowledgeBase Search Functionality Weizhong will share the pros, cons, and strategies for combining semantic and natural language processing (nlp) search. Live presentation with Q&A session.
|
60 mins (TBD) |
Weizhong Wang and the KB team |
| 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. CST | Break and Lunch | 60 mins | |
| 1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. CST | Using your KB Data to Deliver Better Experiences Learn how to export, analyze, and make more informed decisions from your knowledge base data to provide your users better experiences. We’ll focus on Page Views and Search Log data to answer the question, “How can this data help me?” and more. Live presentation with Q&A session.
|
60 mins | Kedar Joyner |
| 2:15 p.m. to 3:15 p.m. CST | Review Feature Requests and Future Sprint Discussion The KB team will review the feature requests from the “Submitting Feature Requests” session, and work with the attendees to rank the items in priority order. The KB team will review planned activities and opportunities for future sprints. Live presentation with Q&A session.
|
60 mins | The KB team |
| 3:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. CST |
Creating Accessible Content This training will cover the essential steps to creating inclusive and accessible content, including writing, formatting, and working with multimedia. This training will include a hands-on demonstration and practice developing accessible KB content. Participants will review common barriers to accessibility and how to fix them. This training will provide ideas for how to communicate about and prioritize accessibility in content creation. Live presentation with Q&A session.
|
60 mins | Kurt Muckstadt |
Thursday July 29, 2021
| Time | Session Name and Description | Length | Presenter(s) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rescheduled to Wednesday August 4, 2021 |
Failed Searches Analysis (Rescheduled) | 30-45 mins | Noah Fairchild and Dana Gerber-Margie |
| 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. CST | Break and Lunch | 60 mins | |
| 1:00 CST to 1:45 p.m. CST | KB Overview Documents What are the most important things your users need to know about a particular tools? This session will cover how Learn@UW-Madison has implemented "overview documents" to guide users through the documents available in their Knowledgebase. These overview documents include core information about the tool, frequently asked questions, and support resources. Content is organized into panels users can expand or collapse as needed; using the KB Team's Collapsible Panels feature. Overview documents can be viewed as standalone documents, or at the top of your Topics page; showing crucial information with all documents in the topic listed underneath. You can also link to overview documents from your site homepage; allowing users to find these resources under a clearly-labeled module. We will explain how Learn@UW-Madison used the following resources to make overview documents for their site: Live presentation with Q&A session.
|
30-45 mins | Andrew Mueller |
| 2:00 p.m.-3:15 p.m. | NDSU: Content Organization with a Service Catalog Model North Dakota State University in Fargo sought out to rebuild its website using a service catalog model to organize content. It has used both its CMS environment and the KB environment to host all web content for campus users. We will discuss our initial process, how the pandemic impacted our rollout, and how we display our content using templates. Live presentation with Q&A session.
|
60-75 minutes | Kristi Steinmann, Marisa Mathews, Michael Russell |
Friday July 30, 2021
| Time | Session Name and Description | Length | Presenter(s) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 11:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. CST | KB Monthly Advisory Group Meeting
|
60 mins | The KB Team |
| 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. CST | Break and Lunch | 60 mins | |
| 1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. CST | Takeaways and Templates This presentation by DoIT Help Desk Knowledge Manager, Dana Gerber-Margie, shares lessons learned and takeaways from administering the largest KB on campus, providing documentation for campus and Help Desk agents alike. She will share templates created for large project documentation reviews, a content guide complete with best practices, and a document review checklist. Live presentation with Q&A session.
|
45-60 mins | Dana Gerber-Margie |
| 2:15 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. CST |
Closing Words and How to Stay Engaged
|
45 mins | The KB team |
Wednesday August 4, 2021
| Time | Session Name and Description | Length | Presenter(s) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3:30 p.m. to 4:15 p.m. CST | Failed Searches Analysis Student employee for the Help Desk KnowledgeBase, Noah Fairchild, will discuss his analysis of over 26,000 failed searches from the last year. Noah used a combination of manual analysis, Java code, Excel functions, and more to understand how users search and navigate through the KB. He will cover his goals, processes, and eventual conclusions, along with the actions taken and planned to reduce the volume of future failed searches. Live presentation with Q&A session.
|
30-45 mins | Noah Fairchild and Dana Gerber-Margie |