How to build your Knowledge Library

Bring your most important company information together in one place.


You've probably been there. Sifting through emails, files and old chat conversations to find information, until finally giving up and asking a team member for help. You're not alone. The average employee wastes nine hours a week looking for information. And it's more than just time wasted. When information isn't readily available, inefficiencies propagate, productivity suffers and critical knowledge is lost.
By building your Workplace Knowledge Library, you can create a central home for your organisation. A place for both essential company resources (in Knowledge Library) and dynamic updates (in Workplace groups) that helps you drive alignment, preserve critical knowledge and engage your employees.
In this guide, you'll learn the fundamentals of building your Knowledge Library. For even more Knowledge Library learning materials and inspiration, visit the Knowledge Library Resource Hub.

How to do it in Workplace

With no coding required, you and your team can get your Knowledge Library up and running fast. Here's how to get started:
1. Create a content plan
1. Create a content plan
Building your Knowledge Library might seem like a daunting task, but you don't need to do it all in one go. Start by identifying a few categories of content that are essential for your employees, then add more content over time. Here are some ideas:
  • Benefits, expenses, PTO, travel policies
  • Employee handbooks and onboarding materials
  • Company mission and values, brand guidelines and annual and quarterly goals
  • Diversity and inclusion policies and resources, health and well-being
Your Knowledge Library is composed of categories and subcategories. Categories help you group information together, and subcategories are where you can dive deeper into specific topics. Use this framework to map out your content plan. Here's an example:
Identify admins and contributors
2. Identify admins and contributors
Based on the categories you identified in your content plan, gather a team of people from across your organisation to contribute their subject-matter expertise to building content in your Knowledge Library. You can choose from the following admin and contributor roles, depending on what involvement each person has with content creation and management:
  • System admin: System admins can pretty much do anything on Workplace, including creating a custom admin role for Knowledge Library Managers.
  • Knowledge Library Manager (custom admin role): People with this custom role can manage everything about your Knowledge Library, including:
    • Customising the Knowledge Library home page
    • Creating, recording and prioritising Knowledge Library categories
    • Giving access to other Workplace users to edit and publish specific categories
  • Category editor: This role can be assigned to anyone who will need to create and update content within one category. They will not be able to create new categories outside of the one they are assigned to. Category editors can:
    • Edit content in the category
    • Add, edit and reorder subcategories
    • Publish category and subcategory content
3. Create categories
3. Create categories
Create categories for each of the broad topics you identified in your content plan. You can then invite category editors from different functions of your organisation. They will take the lead on content creation for that category and any of the subcategories within it. To make someone a category editor, click on the Invite button and go to the Can edit tab, then assign people by name or group membership.
Each category and subcategory can start with a template or be customised from scratch, with elements such as:
  • Cover photos
  • Formatted text such as headers, bullet points, quotes
  • Images and videos
  • Files
  • Tables
Here's an example of what a category page can look like:
4. Publish to the right audience
4. Publish to the right audience
A lot of your Knowledge Library content will be relevant to your whole organisation. Those categories can quickly and easily be shared with everyone by clicking on the Invite button and selecting your company name from the drop-down menu.
But some of your Knowledge Library content might only be relevant to a specific subset of your employees, depending on their region or role. To ensure that people only see content that's right for them, Knowledge Library allows you to invite specific people to view your content using filters for profile information and group membership. People who don't match that criteria won't be able to view your category and won't see it in their Knowledge Library home.
5. Customise your Knowledge Library home
5. Customise your Knowledge Library home
Knowledge Library home is a customisable home page that directs people to relevant information. Home is unique for each viewer based on the categories they have access to, but admins can highlight priority categories and key links that will be visible for everyone.
Admins can also select a cover photo, Page title and subtitle for their organisation's home page.
Here's an example of what a knowledge library home can look like:
6. Add tables to your knowledge library categories
6. Add tables to your knowledge library categories
Collections allow knowledge library admins to organise different knowledge library categories, subcategories, related files and links together. They can then be pinned to groups, making knowledge library content easier to discover and engage with. For example, your new hires might need to access content from a few different knowledge library categories to complete their onboarding. Rather than sending them to all these different locations, you can organise categories and subcategories together into a new hire collection which can then be pinned to your new hire Workplace group.
Only knowledge library admins can create collections, but just like categories, admins can give anyone in the organisation access to edit or view a collection. Any group admin can also pin a collection to that group as long as they have access to view that collection.

People viewing collections will only be able to see specific categories if they've been given access to the view them. They will not see categories that they don't have access to.

7. Monitor views and engagement
7. Monitor views and engagement
Like everything else on Workplace, your Knowledge Library was designed to encourage engagement. People can react and comment on categories and subcategories, and they can also be shared in a group or chat message, so information spreads faster.
System admins, Knowledge Library managers and category editors will be notified when someone reacts or comments on their category. They also have access to lightweight analytics to understand how many people are viewing their content, with filters for department, role, location and more.
Benefits
Benefits
  • Create an official space for important company information and policies.
  • Build content with an easy and intuitive composer. No code needed.
  • People have access to the right information with Knowledge Library home.
  • Content is easy to engage with, with the ability to search for, share and react and comment on categories.
Success story
Success story
XPO Logistics is a top ten global logistics company. They help customers manage goods more efficiently throughout their supply chains. Their work became increasingly important during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic when people around the globe became more reliant on delivery of goods in order to reduce public outings.
To keep accurate and reliable information flowing to employees during this busy and chaotic time, XPO Logistics used Knowledge Library to create a space for employees to stay informed about XPO's response to the ever-evolving coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic situation. XPO Logistics became an early beta tester of Knowledge Library and within a day of getting access to the product, had their coronavirus (COVID-19) response information out to all employees.
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