The KnowledgeBase is intended to provide CNP staff (and other registered users) with a simple means for managing snippets of information, technical notes, working papers, project or database documentation, and the like. Items can be designated for internal CNP use only, or "published" as part of the "FAQ+" available to anyone on the web.
The KnowledgeBase can be updated by CNP staff and other approved users. Any registered user can create a new entry, edit an existing entry, or delete an entry. However, changes must be approved by the KnowledgeBase administrator before they become visible.
Additional Features:
- Find items by clicking through the categories OR through FREE TEXT SEARCH (at bottom of screen)
- Up to 2 files can be uploaded for each entry. Thus, you might want to include a brief description of a detailed technical note in the body of the entry and upload both a Word document with the text of the note and an Excel spreadsheet with related tables.
- A URL for a website can be linked to an entry
Tips for Adding and Editing Entries
- It's generally best to choose only one category for each entry since multiple entries appear multiple times on searches.
- The text search capability, like Google's or any other web search tool, is remarkably powerful in its ability to present users with items of interest. To make the search engine work well, be sure to include key terms that you think users are likely to use for searching for your item.
For example, a note on survey design is categorized under Research. However, the creator is careful to add "methodology", "questionnaire," and "survey instrument" to the text so that a user searching for any of these terms will see this entry.
If a key term doesn't naturally occur in the text, you can always add additional terms at the bottom of the entry in a form like "(Key terms: questionnaire, survey...").
- Adding attachments: If you think you may be updating the attachment at a later point, you may find it useful to paste the entire path for the file (what you entered into the "Add attachment" line) into "Unpublished Comments" field for future reference. (Only the filename, not that path, is saved in the Knowledgebase.)
Formatting Your Entries
You can enter plain text (no bold, underline, font changes, etc.) or you can add the HTML tags for formats as you prefer. Here are a few of the basic ones:
< B >BOLD< /B > (remove spaces inside tags to use)
< I >Italics < / I >
< U >Underline < / U >
< UL > Begin "unordered list" (bullets)
- < LI > Bulleted list item
- < LI > 2nd item
< / UL >
< BLOCKQUOTE >Indented paragraph or group of paragraphs< /BLOCKQUOTE >
If you type in a path and include a backslash, you may need to include two of them side by side (\) for it to print.
Completing a new entry
- Be sure to select at least one category. If none are selected, your entry will not be displayed.
- Publish? If you are not sure if your entry is ready to be displayed, leave this unchecked.
- FAQ? The entries with FAQ checked are included in the "NCCS FAQ+" system and are available to the general public.
Both "FAQ" and "Publish?" must be checked before an entry can be seen in the FAQ+ view. Neither is required for an entry to be seen in the Knowledgebase view.
"I Can't see my entry!
All NEW entries must be APPROVED before they can be seen on the web. Your administrator can approve entries in a matter of seconds.
Indexing of entries, which is required for searching, occurs nightly so you will not see your entries immediately in the search results.
The search engine is ht://Dig (http://www.htdig.org/), a free open source product.