Knowledge base templates
Four category structures and four article outlines, in full, on this page. No form, no download, no follow-up email.
What should a knowledge base structure look like?
It depends on the audience. A customer help centre organises around the tasks and problems customers have. An internal knowledge base organises around how work gets done and who needs to know. An SOP library organises around process areas with controlled approval. A developer portal separates getting started, guides, reference and concepts. The four structures below are working starting points for each.
- Help centre: five to eight task-based categories, plus troubleshooting.
- Internal: organised by function, with permissions per category.
- SOP library: by process area, every document owned and approved.
- Developer portal: quickstart, guides, reference, concepts.
Four starting points
Copy the one closest to your audience, then test it before you commit.
Customer help centre
Public, customer-facing, measured in deflected tickets.
-
Getting started
- Create your account
- Set up your first project
- Invite your team
- A tour of the interface
-
Account & billing
- Change your plan
- Update payment details
- Read your invoice
- Cancel or pause
-
Using [core feature]
- Create a X
- Edit or delete a X
- Share a X
- X permissions explained
-
Integrations
- Connect [tool]
- Disconnect or reauthorise
- What syncs and when
- Integration troubleshooting
-
Security & access
- Roles explained
- Set up single sign-on
- Two-factor authentication
- Audit logs
-
Troubleshooting
- Common error messages
- Import failures
- Login problems
- Contact support
Internal knowledge base
Private, employee-facing, measured in interruptions avoided.
-
Start here
- How we work
- Your first week
- Who to ask about what
- Glossary
-
People & policy
- Leave and time off
- Expenses
- Remote and hybrid working
- Code of conduct
-
IT & access
- Getting accounts and hardware
- VPN and network
- Software requests
- Reporting an IT issue
-
Engineering
- Local development setup
- Deploy process
- On-call and escalation
- Incident runbooks
-
Go to market
- Pricing and discounting
- Competitive positioning
- Demo environment
- Security questionnaire answers
-
Support
- Escalation matrix
- Known issues
- Refund authority
- Templates and macros
SOP library
Controlled, approved, acknowledged. Audit-facing.
-
Quality
- Incoming inspection
- In-process checks
- Non-conformance handling
- Calibration
-
Operations
- Line changeover
- Shift handover
- Machine start-up and shutdown
- Housekeeping
-
Health & safety
- PPE requirements
- Permit to work
- Incident reporting
- Emergency procedures
-
Maintenance
- Preventive schedule
- Fault-finding
- Spare parts
- Contractor control
-
Document control
- How SOPs are approved
- Review cycle
- Acknowledgement requirements
- Printing controlled copies
Developer portal
For integrators. Separates learning from looking up.
-
Quickstart
- Get an API key
- Your first request
- Common first errors
- SDKs and libraries
-
Guides
- Authentication
- Pagination
- Rate limits and retries
- Webhooks
- Idempotency
- Testing with the sandbox
-
API reference
- Generated from your OpenAPI specification
-
Concepts
- Data model
- Environments
- Versioning policy
- Deprecation policy
-
Changelog
- API changelog
- Breaking changes
- Migration guides
One outline per content type
Mixing two types in one article is the most common reason a page fails its reader.
Tutorial
The reader is learning. One guaranteed outcome, no choices.
- What you will build (one sentence, plus a screenshot of the end state)
- What you need before starting
- Numbered steps - one action per step, with the expected result after each
- How to check it worked
- What to read next
How-to guide
The reader has a specific goal and knows roughly what they are doing.
- The answer, in one or two sentences, before anything else
- Prerequisites and required permissions
- Numbered steps, shortest path only
- Variations and edge cases, after the main path
- If it does not work: the two or three most common causes
- Related articles
Reference
The reader is looking something up. Read in fragments, never end to end.
- One-line description of what this reference covers
- A consistently structured table or list - same columns for every entry
- Constraints: limits, defaults, permitted values, deprecation status
- One example per entry where the format is non-obvious
- No narrative - link to a guide instead
Explanation
The reader wants to understand, not to act.
- The question this article answers, stated plainly
- The short answer
- How it works, including the parts that surprise people
- Trade-offs and why the design is the way it is
- What this means for you in practice
- Links to the how-to guides that act on it
Keep reading
Questions people ask before they start
Start a project from any of these structures, pre-built.
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