Operational knowledge

A knowledge article has a title, category, body, owner, service, status and publication time. The service link helps a responder find guidance relevant to an incident or request. The owner gives the team a person to contact when instructions need correction. Article feedback records whether a reader found an article helpful, with a comment and submission time.

Consider a runbook for a recurring service issue. Its owner writes the operational steps and associates the article with that service. The review workflow routes a new article into Review. After the responsible team checks the instructions, a published article appears in the article library. A reviewer should read the steps against a real case before treating the guidance as ready for use.

• Draft. The owner records the explanation and service context.
• Review. New guidance enters review before it is used as published material.
• Publish. The publication state and date show which guidance is available to the team.

Decide who owns each service’s knowledge and who checks new runbooks. Agree how to choose categories that help responders find an article at the moment they need it. Write down what a reviewer should confirm: the affected service, the procedure, and whether the content is safe for the intended audience. Make the publication time reflect the actual release of the article.

A review state means the article is being evaluated. It is not a substitute for the review itself. If an instruction changes after publication, the owner should revisit the article and its status. Archived articles remain useful for understanding earlier operational decisions while the published library focuses the current working guidance.

Create a draft article for an active service and follow its move into Review. Have a service desk manager check the procedure against a known incident or request. When it is ready, set the publication state and time and confirm it appears in Published Knowledge Articles. Open the article as an incident responder and check that the title and category make the right guidance discoverable.

After the rehearsal, submit article feedback for an unclear step. The owner should be able to read the comment and improve the text. Keep the article linked to its service so a future release or incident review can revisit the guidance that responders used.

• Published Knowledge Articles — Service guidance available to responders with owner and publication time.
• Open Incidents — Live cases where the guidance may apply.

Use the knowledge review process to rehearse the move from draft to published guidance.