Can we create a set of "internal answers" that our staff can use when responding to incidents, but that our customers cannot see from the end-user pages?

Environment:

Answers, Analytics, SmartAssistant

Issue:

We want to create a set of "internal answers" that our staff can use when responding to incidents, but that our customers cannot see from the end-user pages. When responding to incidents, we would like SmartAssistant to suggest answers for both published answers and ones created for internal purposes.

Resolution:

You cannot include your internal answers when a staff member clicks the Smart Assistant button.  The report used when you click the SmartAssistant button is not configurable.  By design, any answers that are assigned to a non-public access level  will NOT be included in the results.

Alternate Solution:

You can create a set of answers that are assigned to a non-public access level or status and allow staff to search for those answers when editing an incident from the Search Knowledgebase button.

By default, the search criteria when searching for answers from an open incident is set to search for answers set to a public status type. For this reason, it is easiest to set your internal answers to public status and an Internal access level (that is not enabled for end-user visibility).

One approach for including a set of internal answers in your search results is described below:

1. First, create a custom answer access level to assign all the internal answers to, named Internal, for example. The visibility of the custom access level should be disabled for all interfaces, so that the answers are not displayed on the end-user pages.
    
2. Assign all of your internal answers to the Internal access level and a Public status. Even if these answers are assigned to the Public status, due to the configuration of the access level, the internal answers do not appear on the end-user pages.
    
3. Set the answers to products and categories that are visible to the end-user pages for the interface you are searching from. This ensures that the answers can be found through that interface.
    
4. Determine if you need to modify the search window used when the staff member clicks Search Knowledgebase.  If so, refer to the section below.
    
5. When editing an incident and using the Search Knowledgebase feature, select Internal for the access level and then perform the search.
   
   Staff can append text from the internal answers to the incident response.  However, do not append a link to an internal answer. Due to the non-visible access level, a link to that answer gives a Permission Denied message to the user.

To customize the search criteria used to search for Internal answers, use the appropriate approach below: 

By default, when a staff member clicks Search Knowledgebase, the Status Type and Access Level fields are included as run-time filters so that staff can change the values to search on.

To customize the search criteria and the report used with the Search Knowledgebase feature, you can copy the Search Knowledgebase report and edit the copy. Then, in the workspace, click the incident thread relationship item and edit the Search Report ID property to select the report to use when the staff member presses that button.