Personal Knowledgebase for Outlook
Help Manual
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Welcome
Use KB articles stored on your Outlook folders to reply to support emails in Outlook seamlessly
This is an elaborate help documentation that will guide you how to use Personal Knowledgebase for Outlook. For a
quick overview, refer to our video demonstration available on the product website.
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Table of Contents
Welcome ..................................................................................................................................................................................................... 1
1. Why do you need a knowledgebase? ..................................................................................................................................................... 3
2. Introduction ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 4
Purpose of this add-in ............................................................................................................................................................................. 4
3. Requirements .......................................................................................................................................................................................... 6
4. My Settings .............................................................................................................................................................................................. 7
4.1 Choose and configure KB Folders...................................................................................................................................................... 8
4.2 Problems List ................................................................................................................................................................................... 10
4.3 Custom Fields .................................................................................................................................................................................. 11
4.4 Reply Templates .............................................................................................................................................................................. 12
4.5 Notification Template ..................................................................................................................................................................... 13
4.6 Advanced Options ........................................................................................................................................................................... 14
5. Generating new Empty KB Article ......................................................................................................................................................... 20
6. Generating new KB Article from an email ............................................................................................................................................. 22
7. Inserting a KB Article to a new email when composing ........................................................................................................................ 24
8. Reply a KB Article to an existing email .................................................................................................................................................. 26
9. Send a KB Article to an Outlook contact ............................................................................................................................................... 29
10. Navigate to the KB Folders .................................................................................................................................................................. 31
11. Arranging and viewing KB articles in Folders ...................................................................................................................................... 33
12. Uninstalling Personal Knowledgebase add-in ..................................................................................................................................... 34
13. Important links .................................................................................................................................................................................... 35
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1. Why do you need a knowledgebase?
You frequently find yourself solving the same issue over and over. Your end-users send you emails on similar issues
repeatedly. You wish you could share your knowledge with team members so that everyone has the same understanding and
are communicating the same message when asked about specific issues! Yes, a knowledge management system is what you
need, where all the best practices of your businesses, operations and assets are documented, and are accessible at the
enterprise level to all members of your team.
Other factors that demand for a knowledge management system:
Rising rate of innovation and increasing competition in marketplaces
To replace informal knowledge with format methods, especially, when the organization is under-staffed
Competitive pressures reduce the size of workers that holds valuable business knowledge.
To help new workers to experience and acquire knowledge in the shortest time.
Early retirements and increasing mobility of the work force lead to loss of knowledge.
Need to manage increasing complexity as business operations become globalized.
Changes in strategic direction may result in the loss of knowledge in a specific area.
Retaining knowledge when employees leave or change positions
As most of our work is information based, it is imperative that organizations maintain a structured library of information and
solutions, such that, the knowledge system provides access to right information, at the right time, to the right workers in
need. In brief, knowledge and information have become the medium in which business problems occur. As a result, managing
knowledge represents the primary opportunity for achieving substantial savings, significant improvements in human
performance, and competitive advantage.
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2. Introduction
Personal Knowledgebase exists as an Outlook add-on, allowing you to share information, reduce customer support, improve
staff productivity and eliminate time wasted searching for information across disparate systems such as shared folders and
paper documents, all inside Outlook.
As you use Microsoft Outlook, every day, all the time, to attend to emails from end-users, wouldn’t be better if you make your
Outlook smarter, which do more than just acting as a simple email-client.
Personal Knowledgebase add-in extends your Outlook to provide better interaction between you and your knowledge base,
transforming it into an information-based, interaction-driven and easy to use collaboration tool. With such functionalities in
Outlook, you can document best practices and solutions to common problems and reply to time-consuming and repeated
queries from your users in a click, thereby, reducing service response time, enabling effective collaboration and overall
productivity for your team.
Purpose of this add-in
Your end-users send you emails on similar issues repeatedly. And if you are already aware of the solution, typically, you will
try to compose the solution or if you have vague recollection of it, you would try to navigate to your existing document
libraries, past emails etc. Just consider how much time and effort you had wasted in trying to find the right information at the
moment of need, not to mention the delayed response to the support request. You wish you could share your knowledge on a
centralized information system with other team members so that everyone has the same understanding and are
communicating the same message when asked about specific issues.
Many IT managers resort to using existing emails in Inboxes and other Exchange folders to document best practices and
solutions to common problems, in the form of KB articles, because of the easy accessibility and collaborative capability. So,
when a support request email is received in Outlook, support staffs would generally go to these folders and browse or search
through the tier of KB articles. If a relevant article is found, either the staff would rewrite the solution from scratch into the
email, or copy the contents from article item to the email reply, in a crude fashion. Moreover, the frequent switching back
and forth between the email and KB folders tends to loosen the focus of the support staff, leaving him/her frustrated.
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Evidently, organizations and teams that leverage Exchange folders as a knowledge base would need to reinvent the wheel and
implement an efficient way of importing folder-based article or document, to outgoing email reply.
Personal Knowledgebase is designed to bridge this gap between your Outlook and Exchange folders where all your knowledge
base articles are stored, such that you can effortlessly locate a KB article relevant to an issue from within Outlook itself and
insert it into an outgoing email reply in a single click. All these and more making sure, the outgoing email retains all the actual
files and the original formatting of the selected KB article. No more frequent switching between Outlook folders, no more
copy-paste job etc.
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3. Requirements
Windows Version
Outlook Version
Others
.
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4. My Settings
The Personal Knowledgebase add-in provides a dedicated menu in the toolbar that allows you to customize the contents of all
problem categories/types drop-down boxes, Choose and configure KB Exchange folders where articles are stored, templates for KB
notification, custom fields etc.
The Personal KB menu serves as the gateway for launching most of the functionalities and tools available. In Outlook 2016,
you would find this menu under in a dedicated button menu ‘My Settings’ under the toolbar as shown below.
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4.1 Choose and configure KB Folders
Before you can start generating KB articles or using them in Outlook,
you need to choose the destination KB Folders that store the KB
articles and link them up with Personal Knowledgebase Add-in.
Once linked, you would be able to use KB articles from these folders in
Outlook to reply to emails, as well as generate new KB articles in one
of these linked KB folders using information and content from emails
in Outlook.
To choose and configure a new KB folder, go to My Settings menu >
‘Chosen KB Folders’.
Here is a listing of all KB folders containing KB articles that are linked using the add-in tool.
To choose and configure a new KB folder, click
‘New Folder…’ button.
You will then be prompted to choose an existing
folder or create a new one.
You can re-use existing KB Folders or create new
ones for this purpose.
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For instance, you can create a new folder (e.g., Licensing KBs):
If you have added multiple KB folders in Personal Knowledgebase add-in, you will notice that the 'Raise KB in' drop down
menu shows all of them. You can then simply choose the destination KB folder to which a new KB will be raised from the
selected email in Outlook.
Through the Personal Knowledgebase console, you can choose any number of KB folders for multiple categories, products or
departments.
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4.2 Problems List
The Problems list panel allows you to add categories and sub-categories (e.g., types) that are representative of all possible
incidents reported by your end users.
Gather all the problem areas that your support team will be attending to and feed them into the 'Category' field.
Problem types list - The problem types are sub-category items that falls within the domain of a problem area/category.
Hence, each problem category has a specific list of problem types that you can choose from when submitting a new KB
article.
NOTE: If a particular problem type is applicable to all problem categories, leave the ‘Problem category’ column as empty.
That is, if you have a common problem type for all Problem categories, you don’t need to add the same problem type for
each category. Just leave the Problem Category column empty for that problem type.
In the knowledge base form, when you select a problem category from the drop-down field, it will load this tier of problem
type lists in the type drop-down box, corresponding to the selected category. These nested tiers of categories/types are
complete customizable to your organization's support model and act as somewhat of a guiding decision tree for users
(internal staffs as well as web users) in finding the right KB article.
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4.3 Custom Fields
You can use Custom fields and Custom list as KB metadata to help describe the KB article more meaningfully. Custom fields
can be of 6 different data types as displayed in the image above: Currency, Date/Time, Numeric, Text, Yes/No, Note.
You can add any number of Custom fields as
required and they will all appear in the KB
form in Outlook.
Custom List - The titles of these custom list can be edited to get the proper meaningful label that signifies the information the field
store. For example, the first drop down field can be titled as ‘States’ and the administrator can fill up the names of all the States.
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4.4 Reply Templates
When you choose a KB article to insert into an email reply, usually, you would need to compose the initial portion of the reply,
informing about this KB article and how it can help resolve the issue the sender was facing.
There are two templates provided that can be used when replying an email with a chosen KB article. With a template, you
need not compose anything, even a single word, to make a personalized reply to the sender with a chosen KB article.
2 reply Templates:
a) Reply Email with a KB as file attachment - This template is used when you choose a KB article to be inserted as PDF or
MSG, XPS or DOC file.
b) Reply Email with a KB as inline - This template is used when you choose a KB article to be inserted as inline content
directly into the body of the email reply.
List of all placeholder variables on the chosen KB article that you can embed into the template. The add-in will substitute
the embedded placeholder variables with the actual data on the KB before sending the email.
When you make the reply, the reply template is inserted into the outgoing email, substituting all the placeholder
variables that you have inserted into the templates such as KB_SENDER_NAME, KB_ID etc.
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4.5 Notification Template
You can customize the email template that will be used in notifying support staffs and stakeholders when a new KB article is
published.
This is the template name. And the corresponding body is customizable in the WYSIWYG editor.
Subject of the active template. This can be customized and can take placeholder variables.
A WYSIWYG HTML editor with which you can customize the contents, apply HTML formatting as well as insert the
placeholder variables. The look and feel as well as the buttons and functionalities are similar to Microsoft FrontPage
authoring tool
A list of all placeholder variables available for inserting into a particular template. In runtime (that is, when the
actual email is generated from the template), the enclosed variables will be substituted by their corresponding
values. The followings list all the supported variables:
Variable
Purpose
KB_ID
Unique ID that is automatically generated when a KB article is
generated.
KB_SUBJECT
The short description of the Article (Subject)
KB_ BODY
The actual description/solution of the KB article (body field)
KB_PROBLEM_CATEGORY
Problem Category that is tagged to the KB article
KB_PROBLEM_TYPE
Problem Type that is tagged to the KB article
KB_CREATED
Creation time of the KB Article
KB_AUTHOR
The user who created this KB article
KB_NOT_READY_FOR_USE
The state of the KB article – Draft state or Published state.
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4.6 Advanced Options
With the advanced options, you can control and streamline how you interact with Personal Knowledgebase Add-in and use KB
articles from the chosen KB folders in their Outlook.
Hide pop-up confirmation message – Enable this option to hide the confirmation message that is displayed in a pop-up
dialog whenever a new KB article is generated or edited or an email send.
Use reply Template when using KB to reply to an email – Enable this option to set the add-in to use a customizable
email template when a KB article is chosen for replying to an email. These templates can be accessed and customized
from Outlook > Personal Knowledgebase toolbar > My Settings > Reply Templates.
NOTE: If this is disabled, the add-in will only insert the chosen KB article as inline content or attachments and you will
have to write your own reply.
Show KB Context menu on top – Enable this option to set your preference for the placement of the KB context menu in
topmost or bottom position.
For instance, when this option is enabled, the KB menu items appear at higher position in the context menu (right-click
menu)
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If the option is unchecked, the KB menu items appear at the lowest position in the context menu.
When replying to an email, use ‘Reply All’ – Enable this option to configure the add-in to send the reply with the
inserted KB article to all recipients of the original email (similar to the ‘Reply All’ button in Outlook toolbar)
Default category for newly generated KB article – Choose a category from the drop-down list that you would want to set
as the default category to any newly generated KB article in Outlook.
Default Type for newly generated KB article – Choose a type from the drop-down list that you would want to set as the
default type to any newly generated KB article in Outlook.
Enable this option to pre-fill information on multiple new KB articles that are generated from emails. Here you can set
the number of KB articles that will be displayed in its respective KB form in Outlook before they are generated in the
chosen KB folder. For instance, if you set value 3, when you choose 3 emails to generate KB articles, all 3 will be displayed
in their respective KB form in Outlook so that you can pre-fill further information to the KB articles before they are
generated in chosen folder. However, if you choose 5 emails, it will allow you to pre-fill on the first 3 emails (i.e., 3 KB
forms will show up in Outlook), and the rest (2 KB articles) will be directly/instantly generated in the chosen folder.
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Change the KB Article ID counter - Alter the current KB Id numbering count to your specified number. Comes handy if you
want the KB article numbering to start from a particular number. E.g. 10000 instead of 1 (default).
Place KB Article ID in KB Subject – Enable this option if the Article ID (enclosed in square brackets) is to be placed at the
beginning or end of the subject line of the article item. By default, the ID is placed the beginning of the subject.
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Substitute the logo with your own
To use your own company logo or brand in the KB form, you can specify an image file (JPG, GIF, PNG) located on a network
shared folder. Or, alternatively, you can use an image file located on the web.
And when you open and view any KB article in Outlook, your company logo you specified above will show in the KB form.
NOTE: Make sure you use an image path that is accessible to all users from their systems. This means, you can either make
sure of an image file that is located on a shared network folder (e.g., \\Server\files\logo.gif) or an image from the web (e.g.,
www.company.com/logo.gif)
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Notify the following stakeholders when a new KB is published – Enable this option to inform certain stakeholders (specified
in the box) whenever a new KB article is published/generated in any of the administrator chosen KB folders.
NOTE: Make sure the stakeholders specified in the box are valid email addresses, each separated by a semi-colon (;)
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Placement of toolbars in Outlook- With these options, you can control the placement of the KB toolbars in Outlook
explorer and inspector windows. You can also choose to place the KB toolbar to a dedicated tab.
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5. Generating new Empty KB Article
To generate a new empty KB article, click the ‘New Empty KB’ menu in the KB toolbar in Outlook and choose the particular KB folder
where this new KB will be stored.
A new Outlook item (with the message class ‘IPM.Post.TKB.Article’) will be generated in the folder, contents of which will be
displayed in a special KB form. Enter the subject of the KB article (that best describe the problem or solution in a single line). And
compose your KB solution in the body field of the item (such as you would compose any normal email in your Outlook).
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You can use feature rich formatting inbuilt tools of Outlook, embed images and attachments (just as you use to do while composing
new emails). And don’t forget to tag a category and type by choosing it from the drop-down fields within which this KB article falls
within.
If the article is still in draft state i.e., not yet ready for use, check the ‘Not Ready for Use’ option so that it is not shown in the KB
Selection box when any user tries to choose a KB article for replying to an email or contact in Outlook.
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6. Generating new KB Article from an email
Most often, you might have already written solutions and workarounds to certain issues from your customers through email
communications.
Such emails in your archive could potentially be a goldmine of knowledge of your organization. But mining such information at the
time of needs can be tedious tasks for workers. They might have vague recollection of it. Another problem is navigating to such
existing document libraries and past emails and searching for the right information at the moment of need often takes time and
effort, not to mention the delayed response to the support request.
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Instead, with Personal Knowledgebase Add-in, you can raise new KB articles from such emails, assign a unique ID, catalogue and tag
it with metadata such as category, type and other information specific to your business and store it to an appropriate centralized
folder where it is available for use by your knowledge workers.
Once KB articles are mined from your archived emails and documents, what you end up is a series of well documented, organized
articles that can be easily referenced, searched, catalogued and shared with your support staffs.
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7. Inserting a KB Article to a new email when composing
When you are composing a new email in Outlook, you can also insert a KB article directly by clicking the ‘Insert a KB’ button available
in the Personal Knowledgebase toolbar.
This will pop-up a selection box where you can search and choose an appropriate KB article for insertion into the email.
NOTE: You can perform keyword search and the matching KB article entries will be highlighted in light-red color.
You have the options to insert the chosen KB article as file attachments in the form of Word Document (.docx), Adobe PDF (.pdf),
Outlook MSG file (.msg), or as inline content. If the KB article has any additional attachments, these too will be copied to the email.
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Notice the actual KB article item below, along its formatting and its attachments. They all make it to the inline content that is
embedded into the email (above).
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8. Reply a KB Article to an existing email
If your customer writes to you on a recurring issue, for which a KB article was already being published, you can directly hit ‘Reply
with a KB’ button and choose that particular KB article from the selection box to insert it as file attachments (e.g., PDF attachment)
or as inline content in the body of the email reply.
In the selection box (above), KB articles are arranged in a tree, with each KB folder representing as the root node, and category and
type as child nodes. KB articles are then grouped by their types and categories, making it much easier to find an appropriate one by
means of the context of the issue.
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You can choose from which Exchange folders to show the matching KB articles in the selection box.
To further refine the result, you can search by entering a keyword as filter. And KB articles matching that keyword(s) will be
highlighted in red color. For instance, if the keyword was ‘iPod’ as filter, the entries matching ‘iPod’ are highlighted.
You can insert selected KB article in 2 ways to outgoing email:
1) Inserting chosen KB article as PDF, MSG or XPS file attachment to the email reply
Selected KB article can be applied or inserted into the replied email in varied format. You can choose to insert as attachment in the
form of a word document (*.doc), Adobe PDF (*.pdf), Outlook Message file MSG (*.msg), Microsoft XPS (*.xps) or as single file
MHTML (*.mht).
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2) Inserting chosen KB article as inline content to the email reply
You can also embed the selected KB article directly into the body of the email reply. Any inline images and formatting are preserved
in its original state in the reply also.
Optionally, you can choose if to send the reply containing the inserted KB article directly to the recipient or display the inspector
compose window, so that you can add further information such as attachments or tweak the content.
Lastly, you can customize the reply template headers that are used in the email reply from Outlook > Personal Knowledgebase
toolbar > My Options > Reply Templates.
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9. Send a KB Article to an Outlook contact
To send a KB article to an Outlook contact (address book), click ‘Reply with a KB’ button on the Personal Knowledgebase toolbar in
Outlook, and from the selection box, choose the appropriate KB article to send an email with the chosen KB article.
Before finalizing on a KB article for insertion from the selection box, you can preview the content of the article by checking ‘Preview
Article’ option (located just below the ‘Search’ button). And the preview will be available at the right side.
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And when you visually confirm your choice, click ‘Insert’. And this will create a new email having the same subject as that of the
chosen KB article and the email content/body will use the ‘Reply Template’ where the placeholder variables are substituted with
information from the chosen KB article.
If there are any attachments in the chosen KB article, they too will be copied/attached to the outgoing email.
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10. Navigate to the KB Folders
Your Administrator would surely have chosen and configured few or many Exchange KB Folders where KB articles are stored. And if
these folders are shared with adequate permission levels to view the contents (at the very least), you can navigate quickly to any of
these chosen KB folders from your Outlook in a single click, without searching for it in the hierarchies of folders.
Further, if you had installed the Personal Knowledgebase Admin add-in, you will find a special button ‘Ensure IDs’ in the KB toolbar
in each of the chosen KB folder. You can use this button to process any emails or items that still have not got a unique ID.
Click start to process items in the current KB folder that still have not got a unique ID.
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And the outcome is the assignment of IDs to any KB articles without it.
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11. Arranging and viewing KB articles in Folders
Once you are in any of the KB folder, you can use one of the pre-defined Outlook views (specifically designed for KB articles) under
‘Current View’ menu to organize and group articles by ID, categories and types, author and status etc.
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12. Uninstalling Personal Knowledgebase add-in
To uninstall the Personal Knowledgebase Add-in tool from your computer, follow the steps outlined below:
Step 1: Go to ‘Control Panel > Programs and Features’. Scroll down to select ‘Personal Knowledgebase’ (x86 or x64) and click
‘Uninstall’ as illustrated below:
Step 2: A dialog confirmation follows asking for confirmation. Click Yes.
Step 3: The Personal Knowledgebase setup will now start the un-installation process. Make sure that Microsoft Outlook is not
running (even under the task manager).
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13. Important links
Personal Knowledgebase for Outlook - Homepage
Go to the official website of Personal Knowledgebase for Outlook.
Video Tutorial clips
Watch video tutorials that teach you how to install, configure and work with Personal Knowledgebase.
Purchase License
Purchase an enterprise team license for Personal Knowledgebase for Outlook.
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