The Knowledge Base: Your Company's Articles, Owners and Review Dates in One Place

The Knowledge Base gives a company a working internal knowledge base in the time it takes to click Duplicate. It is a ready-made Sapience database: three linked tables — Articles, Topics and Questions — seventeen saved views that answer the questions a knowledge manager asks every day, and an Ask a question form that turns a staff member's question into an item in your triage queue. It comes filled with fictional example entries, so you can see how the whole thing works before you add a single real article.

This article is the complete guide. It starts with what the Knowledge Base does for your company, then explains how to get your own copy, how the three tables connect, every saved view, the Ask a question form, and the everyday routines that keep a knowledge base accurate.

The Knowledge Base is a template: read-only and shared with everyone in Sapience, so anyone can open it and look around without changing a thing. It is also listed in the Sapience AI Store catalogue under Help & Support. To get a copy you can work in, follow the steps below.

With Copy records too ticked, your copy arrives with the 26 example rows — 12 articles, 6 topics and 8 questions — the 30 links between them, and your own copies of the 8 cover pictures, with every article re-pointed at your copy of its picture. Without the records, you get the three tables, their links, the seventeen views and the form with no rows and no pictures.

If you have not used a database template before, the Starting From a Database Template article covers templates in general.

Everything hangs off the topic: the articles filed under it, and the questions people ask about it.

You make each link once, by picking the topic on an article or the answer article on a question, and every table stays consistent. No names are copied between spreadsheets. Because Topic owner team on an article is looked up from its topic, changing a topic's owner team once changes it on every article filed under it. The same goes for Answer article status on a question, which follows the status of the article that answers it.

The two owner columns, Owner on articles and Topic owner on topics, pick a member of your Sapience team. They are empty in the template, so you assign them in your copy.

Each table opens on an "All" view, and the template adds views for the questions you ask most.

With the example entries, Due for review shows six articles, including the password and account security policy and the working-from-home policy; Pinned essentials shows the laptop setup guide, the leave request how-to and the welcome guide; Quick reads shows the discount FAQ, the leave request how-to and the expense claims reference; and Unanswered questions shows four, including the VPN question that arrived through the form.

Most views are sorted tables. Four use another layout, and in your copy they work the way they do across Sapience Databases:

In your copy you can change, add or delete any view. The Seeing Your Data Your Way: Board, Gallery, List, Calendar and Pivot Views article explains each layout, and Totals, Grouping And Pivot In Database Grids covers the subtotals and the quick sum of selected cells.

The template includes a form on the Questions table called Ask a question. Staff fill it in on a web page, on any device and with no Sapience account, and each response becomes a new question. Its introduction reads:

It asks for four things, and all four are required:

The button reads Ask, and after sending, the asker sees:

To put it to work:

The promise in the success message — a reply by email, usually within two business days — is yours to keep: change the form's wording in your copy if that is not what your team can deliver. The Collecting Responses With Database Forms article covers forms in full.

Keep Copy records too ticked and your copy arrives with 26 fictional entries, linked together the way a real knowledge base would be, plus the pictures those entries point at.

The 8 cover pictures arrive as your own copies, with every article re-pointed at its copy. Untick Copy records too and the pictures do not come across; the tables arrive empty.

Every name, email address and policy is made up, and the email addresses use the reserved .example domain. Delete the examples when you are ready, or untick Copy records too when you duplicate and start empty.

Add a row to Topics with a name and description, pick the Owner team, and assign the Topic owner. Tick Show on homepage for the topics you want to feature; On the homepage lists them.

Add a row to Articles: type the name, pick the Topic, choose the Type, set the Status to Draft, tick the Audience, enter the reading time and write a short Summary. Assign the Owner and set the Review due date. The article appears on the Editorial board and in In the pipeline straight away.

Change the Status from Draft to In review when it is ready for a second pair of eyes, and to Published when it is approved. Set Last reviewed to the review date and Review due to when it should next be checked. Published articles join Published articles, Most helpful and Quick reads as they qualify.

Open Due for review, or the Review calendar for the month ahead. After you review an article, update Last reviewed and Review due. If an article is out of date, set its status to Needs update; when it is retired, set it to Archived.

Tick Pinned on the articles everyone should read, and Pinned essentials keeps them together.

Open an article and add the others to its Related articles cell, so readers can follow the trail from one page to the next.

Attach a picture in the article's Cover picture cell. Published articles with covers appear in the Cover gallery.

Open the question from Unanswered questions, link its Topic, and answer the person by email or chat. Set the Status to Answered, enter the Answered on date and link the Answer article if one settles it. It leaves the triage queue and joins Answered questions.

When an answer deserves a page of its own, write the article, set its status to Published, then open the question, link the new article as its Answer article and set the question's Status to Converted to article.

Update an article's Helpful votes whenever you collect feedback. It is a number you enter, and Most helpful and Published articles sort on it.

Every Sapience database has its own Chat agent, opened with the green Chat button next to the database's name. It works on this one database and with your permissions. In your copy it can find and count entries and read your views. It can also add and change entries for you, asking before it deletes anything, and add columns, views and forms. If you only have read access to a database, it answers questions but changes nothing.

Things to try in your copy:

The Chatting With a Database article covers the Chat agent in full.

Every database can run automations, found under Actions ▸ Automations. An automation watches for an event — a row is added, a row enters a view, a row is updated, a form is submitted or a row is deleted — and then runs the database's agent with instructions you write. For example, when a question arrives through the Ask a question form, you could have the agent look for published articles that might answer it and add what it finds to the question's details.

A few things to know:

The Automating A Database With Its Agent article covers automations in full.

The Knowledge Base gives a company one place for its how-tos, policies, SOPs and FAQs, each with a topic, an owner and a review date, together with the questions staff ask. Its saved views turn that data into the answers a knowledge manager needs every day: what is out of date, what is still being written, what people value and what nobody has answered. The Ask a question form brings new questions in as ready-made rows. Duplicate it, keep or drop the examples, and it is yours to shape.