AMA

Front Knowledge Base AMA

  • 23 September 2023
  • 22 replies
  • 1100 views
helena
Userlevel 4
Badge +5

Hello, community! You might already know that we recently launched Front Knowledge Base, a tool for you to centralize all your internal info for your team and/or external info for customers, which you can manage and access right within Front — reducing both your content and software sprawl. We use it ourselves to host our Help Center.

If there’s anything you want to know about this new feature, you’ve come to the right place! We’re excited to answer your questions and get you started, with the help of Front’s two knowledge base experts:

  1. Anisha: Our internal PM for Knowledge Base who can answer anything related to its features, roadmap, workflows, and tips.
  2. Karen: Front’s own Help Center queen who runs our help center and can answer questions about migrating to Front Knowledge Base, how Front uses Knowledge Base, and general help center processes. 

You don’t need to direct your question to any specific person, as they’ll naturally answer the ones in their domain. Please submit as many questions as you’d like by replying to this thread — Anisha and Karen will start answering them on Monday, October 2. That’s not a deadline, though, so feel free to post your questions if you arrive here after that date and we’ll continue to answer them. 

💡 Pro tip: We have a Front Academy course all about the Knowledge Base if you want to get a head start in learning.

Ask away!

Helena, Product Education Lead

22 replies

Front User
Userlevel 2
Badge +2

Can I create multiple knowledge bases? If so, what are some use cases for multiple internal ones or multiple external ones? 

Front User
Userlevel 2
Badge +2

What are some pro tips to keep in mind for the migration process? I’ve never migrated a knowledge base before and it seems like a daunting task.

Front User
Userlevel 2
Badge +2

Is there a way to use the knowledge base admin panel in conjunction with using regular Front at the same time? It seems like I have to pick one or the other but I’d like to have quick visibility into both.

Benji

Any plans to allow it to be synced with GitHub? 

JohnLine1

What rate plans is it included in and/or what is the upcharge if on a plan that doesn’t include it?

taylor

What is the timeline for greater customization options? Would love to see callouts and better image formatting. 

Are social link previews on the horizon as well?

danielle_hieronimi
Badge

Our existing knowledge base is primarily in BookStack and Clickup. What are some things to think about when considering a migration to Front’s knowledge base vs. using Front’s dynamic objects to link to our existing knowledge base?

googol

Can multiple users edit the content at the same time and mention other editors in comments? Can we connect with Notion to retrieve the content?

JohnW
Userlevel 4
Badge +5

Re: Site Visibility
 

According to article 25116 (Site Visibility Tab), sites can be set to either Internal (Front users directly inside Front) or External (public-facing w/ website searchable by via search engine)

The ‘Internal’ option controls access via Front login.  The ‘External’ option seems to open the door wide to whatever content is in the knowledge base.

Questions:

  1. Are there plans for an ‘Intranet/Xtranet’ knowledge base option, that does NOT require a Front login to access, but provides access controls, that enable limiting content access to Employees who are non-Front users and/or Customers and/or Vendors?

    Why?  We are commited to advancing a ‘Knowledge Ops Maturity Model,’ (Fig A) for which a knowledge base is a key component.  Although we have made a commitment to Front, not every team member will use it.  We potentially want to provide Customers and Vendors with access to a knowledge base / knowledge bases, that act as a Frequently Asked Questions on steroids.  (See Q2 below)
     
    Fig A
  2. Will plugins/Add-ins be provided that allow knowledge base websites to be easily integrated with either public websites (WordPress Plugin, etc.) or SharePoint? 
Together We Can Do More!
jetstreamrobyn
Badge +1

Will Knowledge Base articles have a page view counter, and will this be trackable in Analytics?

karen_nguyen

What are some pro tips to keep in mind for the migration process? I’ve never migrated a knowledge base before and it seems like a daunting task.

My biggest tip is to create an outline/checklist with your migration tasks to (1) quickly see the number of tasks your team needs to complete and (2) to allot the appropriate time for each task. This helps break the big migration project into smaller, actionable tasks! 

I’ve included all my tips and learnings from migrating Front’s help center to Front Knowledge Base to this help article: https://help.front.com/en/articles/251264

If you have any specific questions about the migration process, let me know. You’ve got this! 😀

Karen - Front Support
karen_nguyen

Our existing knowledge base is primarily in BookStack and Clickup. What are some things to think about when considering a migration to Front’s knowledge base vs. using Front’s dynamic objects to link to our existing knowledge base?

Hi @danielle_hieronimi ! To clarify, are you currently using Front’s dynamic objects to link to your existing knowledge base? Or are you looking for information to decide between using Front Knowledge Base vs. using Front’s dynamic objects + your existing knowledge base?
 

If you have any additional context to illustrate your preferred workflows, that would be super helpful!

Karen - Front Support
anisha
Badge +3

Will Knowledge Base articles have a page view counter, and will this be trackable in Analytics?

@jetstreamrobyn ​​​​​​We do not have a page view counter that is public to readers, however we do allow for admins to monitor site traffic via a Google Analytics integration. If you’re looking for something else, I’d love to hear more or you can share the request in our portal!

anisha
Badge +3

Re: Site Visibility
 

According to article 25116 (Site Visibility Tab), sites can be set to either Internal (Front users directly inside Front) or External (public-facing w/ website searchable by via search engine)

The ‘Internal’ option controls access via Front login.  The ‘External’ option seems to open the door wide to whatever content is in the knowledge base.

Questions:

  1. Are there plans for an ‘Intranet/Xtranet’ knowledge base option, that does NOT require a Front login to access, but provides access controls, that enable limiting content access to Employees who are non-Front users and/or Customers and/or Vendors?

    Why?  We are commited to advancing a ‘Knowledge Ops Maturity Model,’ (Fig A) for which a knowledge base is a key component.  Although we have made a commitment to Front, not every team member will use it.  We potentially want to provide Customers and Vendors with access to a knowledge base / knowledge bases, that act as a Frequently Asked Questions on steroids.  (See Q2 below)
     
    Fig A
  2. Will plugins/Add-ins be provided that allow knowledge base websites to be easily integrated with either public websites (WordPress Plugin, etc.) or SharePoint? 
  1. @JohnW Thanks so much for sharing this context with us! As of today, we only support internal knowledge bases which are accessible by users logged in to Front. That being said, your feedback is valuable, and we’ll keep track of this request as we think about the future roadmap. In the meantime, you can consider marketing categories as “private” so that only users with the direct link can access the content in them. 
  2. While we don’t have any integrations on the roadmap yet, we’d love to hear about the plugins you’re interested in and why they would be valuable – Our product team references the Ideas Portal to gather such feedback, and so I recommend logging it there!
anisha
Badge +3

Can multiple users edit the content at the same time and mention other editors in comments? Can we connect with Notion to retrieve the content?

@googol Today, we support editing by a single user at a time. Other editors will need to click the “Take over” button in order to start updating an article that is being edited by another user. While we do not support collaborative editing or comments, I’d recommend logging these requests in our Ideas Portal for future consideration by our team!

anisha
Badge +3

Can I create multiple knowledge bases? If so, what are some use cases for multiple internal ones or multiple external ones? 

Yes, you can create multiple knowledge bases if you’re on the current Growth or above plans. On the latest Starter plan, you have access to 1 knowledge base. You can check out the specific details on our pricing page, under the Knowledge Base section. 

Companies might want multiple internal knowledge bases for different teams such as for your sales, engineering, and marketing teams. The content is so different that it might make sense for your company to keep these knowledge bases separate. For multiple external knowledge bases, you might have different ones based on your audience type such as one for the vendors and one for end users, or you might be a company with various brands or sub-companies where it’s cleaner to keep the knowledge bases for each product separate.

 

anisha
Badge +3

Is there a way to use the knowledge base admin panel in conjunction with using regular Front at the same time? It seems like I have to pick one or the other but I’d like to have quick visibility into both.

Yes, you can! Check out the Knowledge Base plugin which will allow you to reference articles while you are in your inbox view so that you can retain context of your conversations while you write your messages. You can also easily open up this view in its own window or in a browser tab. 

anisha
Badge +3

Any plans to allow it to be synced with GitHub? 

@Benji We currently don’t have this on our roadmap, as it’s actually the first we’ve heard of it. We’d love for you to add this to our ideas board so that others can see it and vote on it! Our product team actively looks at our ideas board and takes feature requests from it.

anisha
Badge +3

What rate plans is it included in and/or what is the upcharge if on a plan that doesn’t include it?

@JohnLine1 Knowledge Base is available on the most recent editions of our pricing plans — you can see the details for these plans on our website or in your in-app billing settings. If you’re on a legacy plan that doesn’t have it, you’ll need to update to one of these new pricing plans, since the Knowledge Base isn’t available as an add-on. You can check your current plan's status in your in-app billing settings by seeing if the label next to your team's plan name says “Legacy plan” or “Latest plan.”

anisha
Badge +3

What is the timeline for greater customization options? Would love to see callouts and better image formatting. 

Are social link previews on the horizon as well?

@taylor Thank you for sharing! We’d love to hear more about exactly what types of specific customization you’re looking to do so we can best meet your needs. Please log ideas in our Ideas Portal when you get a chance, as this input is valuable for future roadmap planning. In the meantime, we offer other customization options as outlined in this article.

julien_lair

Hey, great feature!
is there a way to access articles of the base from the API? We consider using Knowledge base, but we need those articles to show up in our mobile app for our end users.

Thanks a lot.

Julien

anisha
Badge +3

Hey, great feature!
is there a way to access articles of the base from the API? We consider using Knowledge base, but we need those articles to show up in our mobile app for our end users.

Thanks a lot.

Julien

@julien_lair Yes! You should be able to leverage the Knowledge Base public API to access content. This API can only be used for published external knowledge bases.

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