Customer contribution on the CKC
- Product: Cross Product
Question
How can an Ex Libris community member, contribute knowledge to the Customer Knowledge Center?
Answer
Watch the recorded video.
Currently, length limitation for newly published articles is 131,000 characters.
If your text is longer than this limitation:
- Publish an initial version of the article, within the 131,000 characters limitation.
- Once it is published, edit it to add text as you wish.
Community Contribution - Best Practices and Tips
General guidelines
Avoid duplication
Before writing an article, search for existing article that might cover the topic you want to write about. See Tips for Advanced Document Searching in the Customer Knowledge Center.
Audience Level
Different tasks and issues are relevant to different librarian roles, and requires different level of skills, to deal with.
Always assume the reader has appropriate level of technical knowledge, to understand your article.
Simplicity
Keep your article short and simple. Try using only words that are necessary, and avoid unnecessary visual clutter, redundant labels, and other information that does not serve a purpose. Use language that leaves no ambiguity.
Example:
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Click Submit to open the locations window |
Clicking on the Submit button should cause the locations window to display |
Best Practices
Use Present Tense.
A solution is a procedure and should be written in language that leaves no ambiguity. No need in words like “please” and “should” in the solution. Use present-tense and employ simple, command verbs for procedures or processes.
Information confidentiality
Your contribution will be published to the world and indexed by search engines. Do not to include any sensitive information about your institution or 3rd parties, like patron's personal details.
Standardized terminology/vocabulary.
Use product names, regularly used terms (e.g. email vs. e-mail.), module names, process, file names… Checkout the Glossary of Alma, Primo and Summon.
Example:
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Numbered steps
Use numbered or bulleted lists wherever they make sense. Like in step-by-step instructions.
Example:
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Optimize your text for search engines:
- Title - should reflect the content, and include keywords (Module or process name, quotation from error message. Make sure though not to include the "/" sign in the title).
- Include the keywords in the text too.
- Error messages - should be quoted exactly as they appear.
Example:
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Error: WWW-F : MYSHELF-SHORT read_file: can't open /tmp/usm/u20_4/utf_files/exlibris/aleph/usm/u20_4 /alephe/www_f_eng/myshelf-short-head-2-no-course |
Error message related to reading a file and not being able to open a particular path |
Link to other relevant pages
Add value to your text by linking to other pages on the CKC or outside, as a reference for further reading.
Before publishing the article - search again! It could be that a colleague, or Ex Libris, published a new article on the topic in the meantime.
Additional Information
To request a Customer Portal user which will allow you to contribute your Knowledge and publish your own Community Knowledge articles, see: Become a Knowledge Center Contributor
- Article last edited: 10-Aug-2018