Knowledge Base

Cotta

Afternoon All,

Knowledge bases seem to be the buzzwords for a lot of businesses but can anyone advise what they can do that a regular database or spreadsheet can't?

Thank you.

Oblivion

Sorry, but that's on a need-to-know basis. :cool:

Cotta

Oblivion wrote: »

Sorry, but that's on a need-to-know basis. :cool:

I knew I left myself open to that response.

John_Gray

Isn't that the wrong way round? Surely you first need to define your requirements, then work out what you need to satisfy them, rather than seeing what is currently 'popular' in some vaguely-associated area.

Rather than spreadsheets and databases, have you looked at Wikis for providing indexed online information to your business staff?

S0litaire

"Knowledge Base" is just a term for any store of information that has been collected and organised in a easily searchable format which also can be updated easily.

Cotta

True John Gray, however my company is bringing one in and I wanted to know what benefits it offers over our current systems of Excel and Access?

Cotta

S0litaire wrote: »

"Knowledge Base" is just a term for any store of information that has been collected and organised in a easily searchable format which also can be updated easily.

Would items on a spreadsheet constitute this?

S0litaire

It probably means 3 months of the I.T. Department importing the Access Database in to an SQL Database.

Finding that the import went wrong, converting the Access Database to a CSV text file then importing

Finding more errors (and the inevitable critiquing other users inconsistency on their spelling of things like "disk" and "disc") ^_~

Apon finally deciding it's quicker to start the Knowledge database from scratch and inputting all the old data manually.

Oh and playing around with a "web front-end" for a month or 2 till everyone isnot happy with the results ^_~

WTFH

Yes, a spreadsheet could count as a knowledge base.

The term comes from Knowledge + Database, but the idea being instead of it just containing data it contains useful, searchable knowledge which can be updated. Wikipedia (and other wikis) are examples of knowledge bases.

You should be able to EASILY search for information using a variety of search criteria and methods.

WTFH

S0litaire wrote: »

It probably means 3 months of the I.T. Department ...
Oh and playing around with a "web front-end" for a month or 2 till everyone isnot happy with the results ^_~

That's a really bad IT Department.

I'd expect to string it out for at least a year...

scheming_gypsy

Cotta wrote: »

True John Gray, however my company is bringing one in and I wanted to know what benefits it offers over our current systems of Excel and Access?

a knowledge base won't replace them,.

A knowledge base is information, whether it's in a spreadsheet, a database, a word document, a specific program, part of the helpdesk application or written on a whiteboard in the break room.
They're usually used in IT as a record of 'how to' when fixing something. If somebody isn't sure how a fix they can look in the knowledge base to see if it's there. If it isn't and they find a fix they can add it to the knowledge base.