Lab Exercise 1 – Configuration of Collections for Knowledge Search

This lab exercise demonstrates the configuration of collections for knowledge search in Service Now. It includes steps for creating collections for both internal and external repositories, configuring the repositories with URL and access credentials, enabling and starting crawler and indexer jobs, and performing searches for relevant documents based on search queries.

Scenario

An organization is using Service Now as an internal knowledge repository which stores multiple knowledge articles published over the years. Organization’s operational users have been finding it difficult to search for relevant documents and the results are not relevant information based on user search queries which is impacting the MTTR for incidents.

In this lab, we will showcase the detailed procedure for configuring knowledge sources and providing relevant documentation for user search queries. We will create two collections – one for Service Now (internal repository) and another for open domain sites (e.g. stackoverflow.com)

Prerequisites

User should have Super Admin credentials

Information about the Service Now repository and valid URL and access credentials

Information about the open domain websites which needs to be configured

Solution

  1. Open BigFix Runbook AI Web URL and login with Super Admin credentials.
  1. Go to Advance configurations Knowledge and click Manage Collections.
Figure 1. Figure 295 - Manage Collections
  1. Select Collection Type as Custom from list of collection types.
  2. Select the Organization for which you are configuring the collections.
Figure 2. Figure 296 - Manage Collections (cont.)
  1. Click Add New.
  1. The Add/Edit Collection page appears.
Figure 3. Figure 297 – Add/Edit Collection
  1. Type the Collection Name and Collection Description.
  2. Click Save.
  3. Repeat Steps 2 to 6 for creating a collection for open domain websites as well.
  4. For configuring the ServiceNow Collection, perform the following steps –
  1. On Manage Collections page, click next to collection corresponding to Service Now.
  1. The Manage Repository page appears.
Figure 4. Figure 298 - Manage Repository
  1. Click Add Repository.
Figure 5. Figure 299 - Manage Repository (cont.)
  1. Select Repository Type as ServiceNow. It will ask for additional details:

URL

UserName

Password

Figure 6. Figure 300 - Manage Repository (cont.)
  1. After providing the information, click Save.
  2. For configuring the Open Domain Sites Collection, perform the following steps:
  1. On Manage Collections page, click next to collection corresponding to Service Now.
  1. The Manage Repository page appears.
    Figure 7. Figure 301 - Manage Repository (cont.)
    1. Click Add Repository.
    Figure 8. Figure 302 - Manage Repository (cont.)
    1. Select Repository Type as WebURL. It will ask for additional details:

    URL: Enter the URL of website to be crawled

    Depth Level: Specify the depth to which documents should be crawled

    RestrictDomain: Select this checkbox to filter for documents of same domain as mentioned in URL

    Figure 9. Figure 303 - Manage Repository (cont.)
    1. After providing the information, click Save.
    2. Once the collections are configured, you need to enable and start the crawler and indexer jobs. It will start crawling and processing documents for configured repository.

    Look for color code for configured repository. If it is green, then it has been crawled and processed successfully.

    Figure 10. Figure 304 - Manage Repository (cont.)
  2. Once configured repositories have been crawled and processed successfully, then user can search for relevant documents based on search queries. To do that, go to Advance Configuration.
  1. Click Knowledge Search.
Figure 11. Figure 305 - Knowledge Search
  1. Select Organization from the drop-down list, then type the search string (e.g. Machine) in the Search box, and then click.

The search results are displayed in a grid below.

Figure 12. Figure 306 - Knowledge Search Result

Conclusion

Post the completion of this exercise, you should have a good understanding of creating collections and configuring the knowledge repositories, both internal and external.

In the next exercise, let’s see how admins can analyze the documents or knowledge articles which are present in Service Now and govern what all sites are users accessing to search for information.