Aha! Knowledge | Publish a knowledge base

Give customers and colleagues one place to access everything they need to successfully use your product. Create a knowledge base in just a couple of clicks.

a published Fredwin Cycling knowledge base

Click any of the following links to skip ahead:

Overview
Create a new knowledge base
Configure your publishing workflow
View your knowledge base

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.

Overview

Aha! Knowledge Advanced subscribers can publish documents in a workspace to a live knowledge base. To create a knowledge base, you will select a parent note to use as the root document of your knowledge base. It will be your knowledge base's home page. All of the child documents nested beneath it in your workspace will be included in your knowledge base as well, mirroring the document hierarchy you have set up.

Once your knowledge base is live, you can customize it in your knowledge base settings.

To get going quickly, gather the workspace documents you want to publish into one organized hierarchy, nested under a parent document.

Only customization admins can create and customize new knowledge bases in your account, but users with contributor access to a workspace can publish changes to a live knowledge base.

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Create a new knowledge base

If you are a customization admin, you can create a new knowledge base in a few steps. There are two different ways to get started:

From account level settings: Navigate to Settings ⚙️ Account Knowledge bases. Then click Add knowledge base.
From a document: Click the Share menu on a parent document. Access its Web tab and click Share as knowledge base.

The Create knowledge base window will open. Follow the prompts for each step, clicking Next to advance:

Title: Enter a knowledge base title. This will appear on the browser tab when someone views your knowledge base.
Document: Select the root document to publish your knowledge base. This is the parent document that will serve as your knowledge base homepage. All its children nested beneath it in your workspace will be published along with it.
Workflow: Select a publishing workflow. This controls when documents are published to your knowledge base.
Color: Choose a color. This color will be used on all links in your knowledge base.
Click Create knowledge base.

Your knowledge base is ready! You can now click Edit documents to navigate directly to the parent document in your workspace to edit your knowledge base's content. Or access your knowledge base settings to customize your knowledge base navigation, add password protection, upload a logo, and more.

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Configure your publishing workflow

A knowledge base's publishing workflow determines when changes made to documents will be visible on the live website. You selected a publishing workflow when you created your knowledge base, but a customization admin can update it in your knowledge base settings.

There are two publishing workflows to choose from:

Publish as you write

Choose this workflow if you want changes to your documents to be visible in the published knowledge base immediately.

a workspace document that is published in a knowledge base

When using the Publish as you write workflow, documents that are live in a knowledge base will have a dot next them in your workspace documents, with a green dot next to all published documents and a yellow dot next to documents with unpublished changes. Each document will also indicate at the top that it is shared in a knowledge base.

Publish after drafting

Choose this workflow if you want to make edits to your documents and then publish those changes when you are ready. Documents in knowledge bases using this workflow display status indicators:

Green dot: Documents displaying a green dot in the document list are published and have not had unpublished changes applied to them.
Yellow dot: Documents displaying a yellow dot in the document list are published documents that have unpublished changes applied. When opened in your workspace, they will display an Unpublished changes label in the upper right.
Gray dot: Documents displaying a gray dot in the document list are drafts. They have not yet been published to your knowledge base. When opened in your workspace, they will display a Draft label in the upper right.

a workspace document with unpublished changes

To publish drafts or documents with unpublished changes, click the green Publish button in the upper right. If you are publishing a parent document and also want to publish the child documents nested beneath it, use the dropdown on the publish button to select Publish with children. Anyone with contributor access to a workspace can publish drafts or updates.

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View your knowledge base

Documents in your workspace that are published will have a link to their published version at the top of the document. Click it to visit your knowledge base.

Customization administrators can navigate to Settings ⚙️ Account Knowledge bases to see a list of all the published knowledge bases in your account, with links to each live knowledge base.

Read our article on visitor experience for an overview of published knowledge bases.

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