Summary: The Knowledge Base is your company's central place to store and organize information like policies, instructions, manuals, and SOPs. This overview explains how to navigate it, set permissions, target audiences, customize it to your brand, and find content with search or the AI Assistant.
What is the Knowledge Base?
Think of the Knowledge Base as your company's internal wiki or handbook. It moves static information out of the fast-moving Feed and into a structured library of categories, subcategories, and articles. That way, important resources like onboarding guides and safety protocols stay always available and easy to find, on desktop and mobile.
Permissions and administration
Specific permissions are needed to create or change content. Without them, users can only view the content meant for their audience.
- Granting permissions: Network Administrators can give users the ability to add categories, subcategories, and articles. Go to Network settings > Roles > open the specific role > click the Knowledge Base topic and toggle the permission on.
- What someone with Knowledge Base permissions can also do:
- Change the name of the Knowledge Base.
- Update the feature description.
- Upload and change cover photos.
- Manage the "Highlight" status of categories.
Accessing and navigating
Everyone can use the Knowledge Base, though the navigation differs slightly per platform:
- On desktop: Open the Knowledge Base via the left-side main menu. A sidebar lists your categories. Click a category to see its articles first, followed by any nested subcategories. Use the accordions to open or close sections.
- On mobile: Tap the menu panel in the bottom right of the Speakap app to find the Knowledge Base. The landing page shows a "Welcome" header followed by the Latest Articles. To switch topics, tap the Home icon at the top to open the Choose Category list.
Audience targeting
When creating a category, you can select specific business units, departments, and/or groups so only the right audience sees that content. You can refine this further per subcategory and article. For example: make a general "HR" category visible to everyone, but restrict a "Management Procedures" subcategory to the Managers group.
Note: a subcategory's audience can only be the same as its parent category's audience, or smaller.
Customizing for your culture
To drive engagement, make the Knowledge Base feel like part of your organization:
- Rename it yourself: Users with the Knowledge Base permission can rename the hub to fit your company's terminology, for example "The Hub", "Staff Library", or "Service Wiki". No request needed, it's self-service.
- Feature description: Add a custom welcome message and description (up to 300 characters) so users know what they'll find.
- Cover photos: Update cover photos to match your brand identity and make content more inviting.
- Highlighting content: Highlight up to 10 categories or subcategories so high-priority information stands out.
Managing categories
Logical categories keep your library scalable:
- Creating a category: On desktop, click the + sign next to 'Home' in the navigation menu.
- Category details: When creating a category, you can define its audience, pick a color and icon from a wide library to make it visually distinct, and add a short description of what's inside.
- Featured categories: Use the Featured Categories carousel on the home page to put high-priority topics (like "HR" or "Safety") front and center, right alongside individual articles.
For editing and deleting categories and articles, see Editing and Deleting in the Knowledge Base. For text formatting, images, and attachments, see Formatting and Attachments in the Knowledge Base.
Search and the AI Assistant
As your library grows, the integrated search bar finds content instantly. The search scans both article titles and body text, so even deeply nested information surfaces through the right keywords.
AI Assistant integration: With Speakap's AI Assistant enabled, your employees don't have to search manually. They can simply ask a question and get a direct answer, with references to the full articles. The assistant only uses the Knowledge Base as its source and only answers based on content the user is allowed to see. Want to know more? Contact your Customer Success Manager, csm@speakap.com.
Note: Creating and editing Knowledge Base content is currently only supported in the desktop browser version.
Still stuck?
Email us at support@speakap.com with your network name and what you're trying to set up, and we'll help you out.