This article discusses functionality that is included in the Aha! Knowledge Advanced plan. Please contact us if you would like a live demo or want to try using it in your account.
Setting up a product knowledge base can be a lengthy and tedious process. You have to find the right tool, migrate all your documents to it, and develop a workflow to maintain documentation that keeps things accurate and relevant. But with the Aha! Knowledge Advanced plan, you can publish a knowledge base directly from the workspace where you already keep track of product information. This eliminates the need to constantly migrate new documents to a third-party tool.
In this article, we will set up a product knowledge base with a custom domain directly from our Aha! Knowledge workspace.
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Action |
User permissions |
Add a knowledge base to your account |
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Configure knowledge base settings |
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Publish documents |
Identify the need
Let's say we are on the product team for a fictitious company called Fredwin Technologies that builds fitness apps for smart devices. We have a well-established cycling app (Fredwin Cycling) and have just launched a new product (Fredwin Running). We need to provide our new and future Fredwin Running customers with all the resources they need to track runs and stats and fall in love with the app. The support team is always ready to help our users, but our knowledge base should be able to answer their questions faster. We have all the documentation we need to build our knowledge base — so we need to organize it, brand it, and share it with our users.
We will publish a knowledge base for Fredwin Running directly from its dedicated workspace in Aha! Knowledge. We will also connect it to a custom domain to make it an extension of our brand.
Organize your documents
The first thing we will do is organize the documents we want to publish. We want the Fredwin Running knowledge base to be as easy to navigate as possible for our customers. This means it is important for our knowledge base to be logically structured with well-categorized information. If you are following along:
Create folders for each section you want to include in your knowledge base. We plan to publish three types of documents — product announcements, support articles, and release notes — so we will create a folder for each.
Click Add and select Folder. Add a title to the folder. This title will be the name of a section in your knowledge base.
Move the documents you want to publish into the folder. (If the documents are already in your workspace, you can drag and drop them into the folder.)
Repeat for each section you want to include in your knowledge base.
Our support articles will be the largest section in our knowledge base. We want to ensure that the articles within it are well organized, too. So we will build out a hierarchy of folders within our Support articles folder to create subsections and further categorize our documentation. This will help our knowledge base visitors narrow in on the information they are looking for.
Create folders for each subsection you want to include in your knowledge base.
Drag and drop folders into your preferred hierarchy.
Move the documents you want to publish into the appropriate folders.
Add a new knowledge base
After structuring your documents, you are ready to create your knowledge base:
Navigate to Settings ⚙️ -> Account -> Knowledge bases.
Click Add knowledge base.
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Enter a Knowledge base title. We will call our knowledge base Fredwin Running knowledge base. Click Next when you are ready to move to the next step.
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In the Publish existing documents window, search for the source document or folder you want to publish. Select it and click Next.
You can add additional documents and folders after your knowledge base is created.
Select a publishing workflow. We plan to do peer reviews and have a copy editor go over our documentation before publishing it, so we will choose Publish after drafting before clicking Next.
Select a brand color and click Create knowledge base.
Success! You just created your knowledge base. Now, click Edit documents to navigate back to your knowledge base 's documents in your workspace.
If you select the Publish as you write workflow, your knowledge base publishes as soon as you click Create knowledge base. If you select the Publish after drafting workflow, you will manually publish your knowledge base when you are ready.
Customize your knowledge base branding
We already selected a brand color when creating our knowledge base, but we want it to be more of an extension of our brand. So we will add the Fredwin logo and favicon to our website.
From the top of your knowledge base's root document in your workspace, click Settings.
Navigate to the Branding tab. In the Logo section, click Upload logo to add your logo's image file. This logo will appear in the upper left of your published knowledge base.
In the Favicon section, upload a favicon image. This will appear on the left side of visitors' browser tabs when they access your knowledge base.
Customize your homepage
Let's enable a homepage. This is the page visitors will land on when they navigate to our knowledge base's domain. It gives them a first impression of our knowledge base, and we can enable search, highlight key documents, and style it to match our broader company branding.
Navigate to the Homepage tab of your knowledge base settings.
Add a banner image and a banner style. We will upload a colorful banner image and choose the Covered banner style. We will also include a search bar.
Add sections. We will add section for Getting started, Recent product launches, and Popular topics.
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Within each section, add 4-6 links to the appropriate content.
Getting started should link to a collection of introductory content.
Recent product launches should link externally to our launch blog.
Popular topics should link to articles or folders that our users visit the most, or content like user permissions that we know every user will need to see at least once.
Check Enable homepage at the bottom of the settings.
This homepage design is simple, but welcoming. Our users can recognize the knowledge base as an extension of our company brand, they have easy access to valuable content, and they can search for answers to any specific question.
Add a custom domain
We want our customers to know they are in the right place when they visit our knowledge base. So we want to use the Fredwin Running domain that we use for our website (www.fredwinrunning.example) for our knowledge base as well. We will configure a CNAME for our knowledge base so we can use support.fredwinrunning.example as our knowledge base's domain.
Configure a CNAME record with your domain host. Our IT team has already added a CNAME record to our domain's DNS settings for us, so we are a step ahead.
Access the Branding tab of your knowledge base settings.
In the Custom Domain / CNAME section, click Add custom domain, enter a CNAME, and choose how you want to manage the SSL (we will select SSL managed by Aha!). Then, click Save.
Publish your knowledge base
Our knowledge base is built, branded, and has a custom domain. There is only one last step: publishing it.
Navigate to your knowledge base's root document in your workspace.
At the top of the document, click the arrow next to Publish and select Publish with children.
Share the knowledge base with your community
We now have a published knowledge base full of helpful resources for our customers that is an extension of the Fredwin Running brand — and it only took a few minutes to build. We are ready to share it with our customers! Our marketing team will send our customers an email announcing the knowledge base with a link to its domain: https://support.fredwinrunning.example.
Customers can start using the resources in our knowledge base right away — and we can publish new articles to support them with just a few clicks.
If you get stuck, please reach out to our Customer Success group. Our team is made up entirely of product experts and responds fast.