TikiKnowlegeBase

tiki-kb: Knowledge Base functionality extensions for Tikiwiki

Update: Stuff going on at tikiwiki.org: KnowledgeBaseDev

tiki-kb is a series of modest extensions to Tikiwiki that provides a "knowledge base" facility. This facility is much like a technical support library, such as Technet, SecureKnowledge etc. Essentially, it is a repository of documents, each of which is referenced by a unique number and also has a series of "attributes", such as some categorisation and keywords.

A knowledge base offers advantages for document storage over other methods because each document is uniquely identified. As a result, it is easy to find a specific document in a repository of thousands, provided the ID is known. This is useful in supporting role services, such as technical support, because customers can be given references to documents in a convenient and 'fool-proof' manner.

Since an end user may not know the document ID, documents are categorised in "levels". So, a user can browse the top level, and drill down a couple of levels to find a relatively short list of document titles. This offers advantages over less organised storage because users can browse to documents as well as more traditional search methods.

Many users will prefer to search for documents, rather than browsing. For these users, a series of attributes can be stored with each document. Currently, this is limited to the document categorisation and some arbitrary keywords. In the future, tiki-kb may include other fields that can narrow searches (eg. a "version" field could help people find documents relating to a specific version of a software application, for example).

As tiki-kb is new, and not yet fully integrated into TikiWiki, and since any existing installations will not yet have the KB facility, tiki-kb offers the ability to insert existing documents into the KB. Such pages can be CMS documents, Tiki FAQs or Wiki pages. Each type can be given the extra information needed so that they can become KB documents.

tiki-kb is not fully developed. It is provided here as a starting point for anyone who may be interested in it. That said, the parts of tiki-kb that are developed work, and can successfully be used by anyone who wants to try them. The majority of the initially required functionality is in place, except existing tiki documents cannot be added into the KB. Most importantly, there is no documentation to speak of ;-)

tiki-kb has not been integrated into TikiWiki. That is, it does not appear on the menus or other link places. It is not a "tiki feature" so cannot be turned on and off with the administration facility. The permissions used by tiki-kb are not integrated into the permissions manager facility. That said, the permissions can be set using the manager, provided the user is prepared to manually type a URL into their browser. Also, tikki-kb is not backed up by the backup facility within Tiki.

tiki-kb has been developed on Tiki 1.6, and has only been tested on that version. There is no reason to suspect any major problems will result when using 1.7, but this has not been verified yet.

tiki-kb-a1.zip - First (alpha) release (see attached)

To install, just unzip the file - it will create the following:

./tiki
./tiki/kb.sql
./tiki/lib
./tiki/lib/kb
./tiki/lib/kb/kblib.php
./tiki/tiki-kb.php
./tiki/tiki-kb_admin.php
./tiki/tiki-kb_browse.php
./tiki/tiki-kb_delete.php
./tiki/tiki-kb_edit.php
./tiki/tiki-kb_print.php

Note: the tiki/kb.sql file needs to be run against the database to create the tables and data required by tiki-kb. After that, the SQL file can be removed.

Once installed, logon to Tiki as an administrator and manually type the following into the location bar of a browser: http://yoursite/tiki/tiki-kb.php

Attachment	Size
tiki-kb-a1.zip	22.25 KB