Being able to share and obtain knowledge online is of critical importance, and since knowledge management in SharePoint is no exception, I’m pleased to announce the release of SharePoint Knowledge Base Solution Accelerator R2.0 for SharePoint 2007 and SharePoint 2010. The KB Accelerator 2.0 release brings you additional capabilities around search, reporting, exporting, approval processes, and much more.  Read on for highlights of the new and improved features and functionality found in the 2.0 release.

Additional search enhancements:
Search plays a critical role in a knowledge base management application.  When you have thousands of articles on your site, you need your users to be able to easily find the information they seek. KB Accelerator 2.0 brings you additional search capabilities:

• Full text and keyword search
• New search criteria options added:
  • Search for exact phrases (join all words with AND) surrounding text in quotation marks (“search phrase”).
  • Search for any of multiple words (join all words with OR) separating each word with a space (word1 word2).
  • Exclude words from a search prefixing the word with a hyphen/minus (-word).
  • Perform searches on Date/Time columns plus or minus a desired number of days.
  • Yes/No columns now displayed as a drop down list to allow searches either yes or no (or both).
  • Search Choice and Lookup columns for multiple values (joined OR).

Reporting:
You want to be able to see which articles are being utilized the most. From the bird’s eye view, you can now see that. You can also print or export it out.
Additional available reporting options include:

• Article Counts Categories
• Article Counts Article Type
• Question and Answer counts

Usabilities:
We want to make life easier for the administrator, users, and authors improving the following:

• Centralize the administrative site and the client site into one central location:

• Allow users to export the article to .pdf or print:

• Introduce the Author’s area where authors can edit, sort, and manage their articles through a grid view:

• Allow authorized personnel to expire articles
• Provide a tool for authorized personnel to set permissions on articles and categories, e.g., a Troubleshooting article that can only be viewed members of the Engineering Team
• Integrate with Workflow Conductor 1.6 for the following processes:
  • Knowledge Base Article Publishing
  • Publishing comments

Need a flexible, easy-to-use knowledge management tool for SharePoint? Download the free 30-day trial and try out KB Accelerator. Your feedback is always appreciated in the SharePoint Knowledge Base Solution Accelerator forum.