Describe knowledge management in Dynamics 365 Customer Service

With Dynamics 365’s knowledge management capabilities, organizations can provide information to both their employees and customers by creating and managing knowledge articles that provide the information individuals are looking for. Knowledge articles help address any number of issues customers and employees encounter while using your organization's product or services. Knowledge articles might include solutions to common issues, product or feature documentation, answers to frequently asked questions (FAQs), or product briefs. Dynamics 365 Customer Service lets organizations create knowledge articles, format the article content, embed videos or images, and more.

The knowledge management capabilities of Dynamics 365 Customer Service organizations allow organizations to do the following tasks:

• Create and design knowledge articles: Create rich, well formatted knowledge articles and emails to send to customers that can include embedded videos, images, links, and more. For example, an article can include a link to a YouTube video that visually walks through the process defined in the article's content.

• Manage article life cycle: Out-of-the-box business process flows help to ensure that all knowledge content is current and meets necessary standards.

• Manage article version history: As articles are updated, you can manage updates and work with previous versions without disrupting the live or published articles.

• Translate articles: Provide multiple language translation versions of an article. For example, agents can send articles to customers in their preferred language if available.

• Publish articles: Publish articles as soon as they're approved or schedule them to be published later. You can also set expiration dates on articles.

The image shows an example of how this process works in its entirety:

To provide flexibility, knowledge articles can be created in multiple ways inside Dynamics 365 Customer service.

• Manually: Individuals manually create knowledge articles.

• Semi-automated: A representative can elect to have an article created based on the case details when closing a case.

• Automatically: When a case is closed, Dynamics 365 automatically determines if relevant knowledge content exists. If not, it's created.

Manual article creation

Most commonly, you manually create articles in the Copilot Service workspace application. Your organization's knowledge managers then review and approve the articles.

When you create a knowledge article manually, you need to provide the following details:

• Basic details:

  • Title: A clear, descriptive name for the article.
  • Keywords: Add relevant search terms to improve discoverability.
  • Language: Select the language for the article.
  • Expiration Date (optional): Define when the article should expire.

• In the Content section:

  • Use the rich text editor to format your article.
  • Include headings, bullet points, links, and images for clarity.
  • Add attachments if needed (for example, PDFs, screenshots).

• Article Type: Choose options like FAQ, How-To, or Troubleshooting.

• Subject: Link the article to a subject hierarchy for better organization.

• Product Association (optional): Associate with specific products or services.

• When ready, select Publish to make it available in searches and portals.

Another way that knowledge articles can be created is by prompting a representative to create a knowledge article from the case details of the case they're resolving. When a representative resolves a case, the system displays a Case Resolution dialog that includes an option such as “Create Knowledge Article from this Case.” If the agent selects this option, Dynamics 365 opens a Knowledge Article form prepopulated with key case information. The article's content is drafted based on details in fields such as the case title, description, and resolution notes.

This approach reduces the effort required to create content and ensures accuracy by using existing case data. The agent can then review, edit, and enrich the article with more details, assign categories, or tags for better searchability. Just like when the article is created manually, the article is saved as a Draft that requires approval. This approach ensures that knowledge creation is integrated into the case closure workflow, making it easy for agents to contribute to the knowledge base without disrupting their normal process.

Configuring knowledge management

Dynamics 365 provides organizations with multiple ways to configure their knowledge management options based on these needs. While most organizations store their knowledge articles directly in Dynamics 365, many organizations may already have knowledge content stored in other sources. In those instances, they can also connect their knowledge repository to other sources such as another Dynamics 365 instance or a SharePoint site. For example, many organizations store knowledge content in their SharePoint. Since the content is already there, it makes no sense to try to create that content in Dynamics 365. You can connect to your SharePoint site as another source and then create more articles in Dynamics 365 as needed.

Now that you were introduced to the process of creating an article, let’s create one in the application.