• Introduction
• Finding expiring documents:
  • Reviewing a document from the email link
  • Searching for documents to review
• What do to: 
  • No changes are needed 
  • The document needs to be edited / updated:
• Additional Help

Introduction

The KnowledgeBase (KB) is setup to be a central repository for information, both internal and external. 

• "External" documents are available to the world, with no access restrictions. 
• "Internal" documents require a University login to access.  Individual documents can be further restricted to only certain people.  

KB documents can be accessed directly through the KB interface, and can also be used as website content.  KB documents have both an "owner" and an expiration date, helping ensure that they remain up-to-date. 

NOTE:  Once a document has expired, it is no longer available to end users.  You will NOT receive email reminders about expired documents.  The document will remain in the KB Admin site in the "Expired" tab, and can be re-enabled.  

There are 2 ways to locate documents that will be expiring soon:

• From an email - you should get an email ~4 weeks, 2 weeks, and 1 week before a document expires.
• Searching in the KB Admin Tools

What to do when a document is expiring: 

• No changes are needed
• Updates are needed

Finding expiring documents:

Reviewing a document from the email link

1. In the email that you receive about an expiring KB document, there will be a link that takes you directly to that document's page in the KB Admin Tools.
   
    
   
   
2. Go to What To Do

Searching for documents to review

Rather than waiting on the email that documents are expiring, you may wish to find a number of documents at one time.  

To do this: 

1. Go to the KB  Admin Tools (https://answers.uillinois.edu/kbAdmin/) and login.  
   
   
2. You'll first get to the "Home" screen. Click on the Documents tab at the top (circled in red).
   • NOTE: Your default screen can be changed using the "My Profile" link on the left navigation.  

3. Select the "type" of document you wish to search for in the left navigation. "Expiring" is selected below, as shown in the blue bar on the left navigation. 
4. Search for the document you'd like using the search fields (circled in red, below).   
   
   
   
   
   
5. Click on the title of the document you want to review. 

What do to: 

Read through the document.  Make sure it's formatted well and decide if edits are needed or not. 

• No changes are needed
• Updates are needed

No changes are needed 

1. Click on the Mark as reviewed button (circled in red, below). 

2. A notice will pop up asking if you want to extend the expiration.  Click OK.  
   
   
   

The document needs to be edited / updated:

1. Click on the Edit button (circled in pink, below).

2. Edit the document.  See https://kb.wisc.edu/kbGuide/114570 for a guide to the TinyMCE editor.
   
   
3. When you're done editing the document, you must ALWAYS change the "Status" to Active (see image below) before clicking on the Submit button (the default status is "In Progress").  
   
   
   
   
4. The "Accessibility Checker" will appear if there are any accessibility issues. Please review the issues to determine if changes are needed.  
   • This can be triggered by:
     • Tables that do not have a caption
     • Non-black text 
     • Images that do not have alternate (descriptive) text
   • See https://kbadmin.apps.uillinois.edu/kbGuide/116740 for more guidance on the Accessibility checker
     
     
     
     
5. Once the document has been successfully set to "Active", you'll see the following screen. Note that the progress bar shows that it's active.  To extend the expiration, click on the Extend expiration button (see the red arrow, below). 
   
   

IMPORTANT NOTES:

• If you do not change the status to Active after making changes:
  • The "Active" version (the version shown on the KB) will be the old version and your changes will be kept in an "In Progress" state. If that happens, you'll see that the document has a status of "Active / In Progress"
  • As you can see below, the progress bar is stopped at "In Progress", but the "Active" button is green.  This indicates that an Active version of the page exists, but the current version is "In Progress". 
    
    
    
    
  • You will not be prompted to extend the expiration date.
• To fix this, edit the document again, and click on the "Active" button under "Status" and then click Submit. 

Additional Help

If you need additional help, have questions, or want to make advanced edits, contact SCS Computing staff at scs-help@illinois.edu.