HubSpot Ideas

MartinTexada

Knowledge Base - Add Search Filters

The knowledge base search needs one of:

  • The ability to create pre-built lists of metadata tags, and then add those metadata tags to articles, and then be able to filter your search based on those metatags.  For example, I should be able to add a tag for the article type, such as a how to, conceptual or troubleshooting, or a tag for the product, or even product feature or type of action (such as searching, creating, editing, deleting, etc.)
  • A radically reworked article categories/subcategories system that enables the author to to further customize their categories to include metadata

My company supports multiple products, many of which have overlapping functionality but are intended for different end users.  This requires that I generate separate articles targeted at the different end users for each product.

 

The problem is, your search functionality always searches the entire knowledge base.  So, if I have an article on how to create a user profile for both product A and product B, how will an end user tell the difference between the two articles?

 

Currently, my (totally inelegant) solution is to add the product name into each article title, thus exponentially increasing the length of each title.  I also have created subcategories that awkwardly sub-divide the product by actions you can take.But this is just a bandaid solution and is not scalable or sustainable.  

 

Tagging articles will work to an extent, but we should give end users the ability to further refine their searches with filters and help them find the information they want easily and reliably. 

4 Commentaires
DMurdoch
Membre

This tags and filters concept is a great idea and very much needed. My company sells a bunch of separate products with all customer help content sitting on the one Hubspot knowledge base. The current design of the KB makes the experience our customers have in searching for help content messy and frustrating. We are considering replacing Hubspot KB with something more suitable for this very reason.

 

Alternatively, does anyone out there have any ideas for how to solve this problem?

MikeJennings
Participant

The categorization system (many-to-one) is wholly inadequate as I have many articles that belong in many categories (many-to-many).  (Duplicating items is totally unacceptable due to version control issues.)

 

I would be thrilled to abandon that system in favor of one that uses metadata (custom properties a BIG plus) to allow you to build a hierarchical set of filters based on metadata.  It would look the same to users but it would dynamically build content lists intelligently and allow items to appear in more than one part of the hierarchy.

 

My knowledgebase is growing and it's getting harder for us to get different customer types to the information they want without wading through a big soup of data.

 

Also, the authoring tool search function is hopelessly basic, only searching on titles.  It would need to allow me to search on metadata (and content!) as well.

 

Finally, I would like the filters to be accessible via a URL so that our sales and support teams can share links that directly open the relevant sets of information.

tj03
Participant

Yes and Yes!  I wholeheartedy agree.  Definitely need the ability to search by tag and search by content, not just title!

 

Also need a way to quickly and easily find articles with unpublished changes.  Not having a way to find unpublished changes is REDICULOUS!!  I have hundreds of knowledge articles.  If we have a big software release coming and I wait until after the release, it could take days to get all articles updated properly. In which case, my knowledge base is out of date for days.  If I make the changes in advance, but don't publish them until release date, it is impossible to find all of the articles with unpublished changes without having to look at every single article... or keep a list and make sure it stays up to date!  

 

We switched from Zendesk to Hubspot Service Hub to save money and get our tickets into the same system we use for Sales & Marketing.  Almost every day, I regret it.  The only positive outcome is that all information about a customer is in one place.  Everything else about Service Hub is a downgrade from Zendesk.

MPhilipp
Membre

Adding a filter by knowledge base is also a good idea, while you'r writing an email.