Build your SharePoint Knowledge Base with BindTuning

A well written and effectively structured internal knowledge base should be the base of any team’s self-service and onboarding strategy. Not only does it show your staff that you care about them as much as you care for your customers, but it also helps improve productivity, promote collaboration, gather best practices, and retain knowledge.

If you are already leveraging other apps within the Microsoft 365 productivity and collaboration suite, building an internal Knowledge Base on top of SharePoint is a low risk, high payoff investment. Even if you don’t yet have a fully working SharePoint intranet with a complex architecture, you can start small and create one single site collection with a couple of pages to create a Learning & Development center that centralizes important information on products, services, departments, or topics of interest.

The Modern SharePoint experience allows for the creation of tagged article pages and metadata rich lists & libraries so even if you can’t afford to invest in more complex Microsoft solutions such as Microsoft Viva Topics, you can still leverage many of the advantages of having a single place for sharing intellectual capital.

Challenge

Discoverability is critical when it comes to Knowledge Bases. One of the main challenges when creating a Knowledge Base in SharePoint is creating an optimized Home Page that helps users easily navigate through content, quickly finding answers to simple questions, identifying key topics and going in-depth with additional resources.

Solution

Some of the strategies used to speed up and simplify the way users search and find information in a Knowledge Base Home Page are:

• grouping issues by categories or topics
• displaying lists of FAQs front and center
• adding links to in-depth information
• creating an index or table of contents to improve user experience in long pages, with lots of content.

In this blog post we will walk you through the process of implementing a powerful Knowledge Base in SharePoint starting from a site collection’ home page. We will use BindTuning Slider to create an appealing header, displaying latest information and leverage BindTuning Accordion Web Part plus the recently launched BindTuning Table of Contents Web Part to better organize, structure and display content, pointing users in the right direction when in need of further information.

Implementation

1. Create a new site collection, exclusively for Learning & Development purposes. You can name it “Learning & Development”, “Knowledge Base” or any other suitable thing. For a company-wide Knowledge Base, I recommend creating a Modern Communication Site but if you are creating a smaller knowledge repository for a team or department, a Modern Team Site would work just fine.
2. Add an illustrative, easily identifiable header to display latest additions to the Knowledge Base, on-demand training videos or upcoming coaching events. To enable a combination of both, I have used BindTuning Slider to create a rotating banner.

Structure data with BindTuning Accordions

• Define your content structure:
  • start by identifying Key Topics or Categories relevant to be on the Knowledge Base Home Page and add questions or ideas around these. Examples of key topics of categories would be “Products”, “Internal Processes”, “Most Common Acronyms” or any other comprehensive topic of interest.
  • add a 2^nd level of sub-topics or frequently asked questions
  • prepare the content – text, links, HTML and/or images that you want to add under each subtopic or question
    • Example:
      • Category: Internal Processes
      • Sub-Topic/Key Question: Where can I submit project expenses?
      • Content: Expenses can be submitted to your manager email directly or using our system here
• Edit the Home Page to add new sections to the page – for each category/key topic add one BindTuning Accordion Web Part
• Click on the pencil icon to the left of the web part area to access the Accordion Settings Panel 
  • Click on “Create new accordion list” and name it “bt_accordion_topic1”
  • Add one of your 5 key topics or Categories to the web part title, where it reads “Accordion”

 

• Start adding content to your Accordion
  • Click on the plus sign next to the web part title
  • Fill the form that pops up on the Modal with:
    • Title = Sub-Topic/Key Question. E.g.: Where can I submit project expenses?
    • Image: use a picture or icon to identify the topic
    • Content = text, links, images or HTML that you want to add under each subtopic or question. E.g.: Expenses can be submitted to your manager email directly or using our system here

Tip! Customize content text size and color, add pictures and buttons to highlight links

• Go back to the Accordion Settings Panel for final tweaks and customizations:
  • Define colors and format (Layout Options » Layout). Tip! Choose a color pallet that aligns with your corporate branding guidelines and extend it to all web parts on the page
  • Activate search (Layout Options » Show Search)
  • Apply theme colors to the title bar (Web Part Appearance)
  • Activate anchors for each item and content zone (Anchor Settings)
• Replicate the same process for all 5 Key Categories or Topics

 

Navigate through data with BindTuning Table of Contents

The BindTuning Table of Contents enhances the BindTuning Accordion experience by automatically creating an index linked to content added to each accordion on the page. Clicking on each title (category or topic) and item (sub-topic of key question) on the Table of Contents, the user is smoothly taken to the relevant piece of content on the page, which can either pop-up or fade to attract attention.

• Add a new “1 column layout” section below the BindTuning Slider and above the first line of BindTuning Accordions.
• Add the recently released BindTuning Table of Contents Web Part to it. Magic! A Table of Contents pops up on the right side of the screen, automatically populated with data from BindTuning Accordions.

• Open the Table of Contents Settings Panel and customize layout, animations, and web part appearance:
  • Layout: define where the Table of Contents will be displayed, which icons will differentiate each Title (Category) and Item (Sub-Topic and Content) and with which font size
    • Panel position – the Table of Contents can remain on the side (right or left) or occupy its designated space on the column to which it was added. Tip! For longer Table of Contents, placing it in the page can take more real estate than the actual content, negatively impacting the user experience.

• • • Add your own custom icons to differentiate each sub-topic or key question OR use the ones already defined in each accordion
    • Set the Title Font Size to be larger than the Item Font size as that will contribute to differentiating both.

• • Animations
    • Set the scroll to Smooth to avoid abrupt jumping from the Table of Contents to the actual content in the Accordions
    • Define which animations trigger clicks in the Table of Contents Titles and Items. Tip! Ideally, animations should differ when clicking on the Titles and Items.
  • Web Part Appearance: Customize the Table of Contents Title Text and Background color. Tip! Select a different color from the one used in headings of the remaining web parts on the page.

Conclusion

Your Knowledge Base is ready to assist team members with common questions, redirecting them to additional resources when needed. Next Steps? Keep growing your knowledge center and don’t forget to link your accordions to as many helpful pages and resources as possible!

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