KB User's Guide - General Info - Entering a Lengthy Document into the KB
We often have lengthy, 25 page plus Manuals, Handbooks, Project Charters, Protocols, Procedures, etc., that need to be accessed by users on the KB. Here are some things to consider when when breaking the document up into blocks of information.
UPDATE: The new KB editor allows pasting content directly into the KB, this includes Excel tables. However, the New Editor is in beta mode and had limited capabilities. Please read this document [Link for document 93216 is unavailable at this time] or contact the KB Team for more information about your lengthy document and using the New Editor.
General Questions About Your Document
Take moment and consider the answers to the questions below about the document that already exists in another place, that you would like to access via the KB.
- Is this Word Document in its very final form?
- Do any of the text, tables/ or diagrams need to be updated?
- Who is the audience for this document?
- Is it open to the Public, will you set this set of documents to the External KB Site?
- Will it be restricted to your Internal site? (e.g. only those who are manually entered in your Users tab will be able to access this doc)
- Is it restricted to UW Madison or your Institution? (e.g. those who log in with a NetID) – review Campus Access Options here.
- Is it restricted by UW Madison Department ? – review Group Authorization options here.
Table of contents
- Create a 1 column table as a Table of Contents.
- Set this document to Search Priority to High. (e.g. 3 asterisks appear in front of the title of this doc, it comes up to the top of all docs listed).
- You may use jquery to create a Table of Contents within a KB document. Every header (e.g. Title in the Doc with and H3 or H4 tag) will be listed at the very top of the page so that visitors to your live site can peruse the list and go straight to the section needed instead of combing through the whole doc.
- Here is the how-to create a jquery Table of Contents document
- Here is an example of a jquery Table of Contents document in action
Tables
- The table capabilities in the WYSIWYG editor are limited. A lot more can be done in the HTML editor.
- If the table you are pulling into the KB Doc is static, cut the table out as an image using a SnagIT, MS Paint etc., save it as an image file and upload it into your attachment folder as per usual.
- Should the table need to be updated over time and it is in Excel, try pulling it into http://tableizer.journalistopia.com/ and copy the HTML that it yields into the KB HTML editor.
- However, if the table has been created in Microsoft Word, we would recommend that it be copied into Excel AND THEN copied into the Tableizer.
It's not always perfect…but it gets a lot of the work done.
Text
- The HTML Tidy will help clean up the MS Word code that can potentially cause confusion if pasted into the KB.
- Use the See Also link feature (kb links appear at the bottom of the page)
- Use the Up, Previous and Next to guide visitors to your live site.
- Also, please consider all the keywords (including acronyms, nicknames and misspellings) that are applicable to this set of docs. The Default Keywords feature will be super helpful..its easier to delete/add a couple of keywords to a long list than it is to recreate the list each time.