Knowledge Center Components

Before you start working with Genesys Knowledge Center, you might find it helpful to learn about its components:

Knowledge Center Server—Combines indexing and natural language–based search capabilities to provide effective knowledge article retrieval from one or more knowledge bases.
Knowledge Center CMS—Provides customers who do not have an existing Content Management System (CMS) with the ability to create and update their knowledge bases and push them to the Genesys Knowledge Center Server for indexing and search. This component also allows customers to import and edit knowledge articles from a file.
Knowledge Center Plugin for Administrator—Enables system administrators to use Genesys Administrator to configure their knowledge clusters.
Knowledge Center Plugin for Pulse—Allows contact center managers to view Genesys Knowledge Center reporting at near real-time from the Pulse user interface.
Knowledge Center Plugin for Workspace Desktop Edition—Provides agents with access to knowledge events (searches, article views and feedback) related to the current customer and also allows them to search the knowledge base right from their desktop.
Knowledge Center Data Import Tool—Use this tool to import XML-based QNA data into a Knowledge Center index.
Knowledge Center REST API—Can be used for both client and management functions.
Genesys Web Engagement Integration—Knowledge Center can be used with GWE to provide proactive engagement capabilities.

Knowledge Center Server

The Genesys Knowledge Center Server combines indexing and search capabilities that allow for effective FAQ retrieval over one or more knowledge bases. It is web-based, and can run under the Jetty HTTP Server.

At its core Knowledge Center Server consists of two key parts:

The Elasticsearch search and analytics engine
Several Elasticsearch plugins

Elasticsearch is a search server based on Lucene. It provides a distributed, multi-tenant–capable full-text search engine with a RESTful web interface and schema-free JSON documents. ElasticSearch is distributed, which means that indices can be divided into shards and each shard can have zero or more replicas. Each node hosts one or more shards, and acts as a coordinator to delegate operations to the correct shards.

Other Features of the Knowledge Center Server

Knowledge Center Server exposes a REST API that can be used for both client and management functions.
Knowledge Center Server is a cluster application, meaning that several nodes or servers can be grouped within a single cluster.
Knowledge Center Server requires two application objects in Genesys Administrator:
- One to describe the server itself (type = Genesys Knowledge Center Server)
- Another for storing high-level options and knowledge base configurations, and for integrating the Knowledge Center server with other applications (type = Application Cluster)
You can use third-party load-balancers above the cluster to organize your servers into a single pool, thereby providing a single point of entry for your users.
Knowledge Center Server uses Genesys Roles to restrict access, and to authorize and authenticate users.
The Knowledge Center installation package includes a launcher that can launch both Jetty and all of the applications deployed on Jetty as a standalone Genesys application. To accomplish this goal, the launcher communicates with the Genesys Config Server to fetch the required options.

Knowledge Center CMS

The Knowledge Center Content Management System (CMS) serves several purposes:

Creates, activates, and deactivates knowledge bases
Creates, updates, and deletes questions and answers in a knowledge base
Assigns categories to this content
Imports historical information from the Knowledge Center Server

The CMS primarily interacts with the Knowledge Center Server when creating or updating index data.

Plugin for Administrator

This plugin lets you manage the structure of the knowledge bases that are controlled by the Knowledge Center Server Cluster application object in Genesys Administrator.

After you install this plugin, you will have access to a separate page in Administrator that displays a user interface for creating new knowledge bases and for editing the descriptions, options, languages, and custom fields in existing knowledge bases.

Plugin for Pulse

The Knowledge Center Plugin for Pulse displays Knowledge Center Server statistics, such as KPIs, user activity, trending topics, like and dislike trends, types of activities, and more.

Here is a sample display of key performance indicators:

Key Performance Indicators

This image shows a sample dashboard containing analytic reports:

Analytic Reports

Plugin for WDE

Your agents can use the Knowledge Center Plugin for Workspace Desktop Edition (WDE) to access Knowledge Center data from from their WDE worksession.

For example, if a customer escalates a question using a chat widget and the resulting interaction is routed to an agent, Knowledge Center can pre-populate a search based on the data that is attached to the chat interaction. When the interaction reaches the agent, he or she will see the customer's search history, so the customers needs can be met more quickly. In cases where the customer doesn't authorize automatic search-based access, the agent will also be able to search the customer's session history if the customer allows this during their chat.

The following images show a QNA search and customer history, respectively.

QNA Search

Customer History

Data Import Tool

You can use the data import tool to import QNA data from an XML file into a Knowledge Center index . The data in your XML file must be stored in a specific format, as shown in the following simple example:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<documents kbsId="gkc" lang="en">
    <document>
        <id>gkc_1</id>
        <question>What is Genesys Knowledge Center Server?</question>
        <answer>Genesys Knowledge Center Server combines indexing and search capabilities that
                allow for effective FAQ retrieval over one or more knowledge bases.</answer>
        <categories>
            <category>
                <id>1</id>
                <name>Common article</name>
            </category>
        </categories>
    </document> 
</documents>

Knowledge Center REST API

Knowledge Center REST API exposes three sets of functionality:

The Knowledge API can be used by Knowledge Center Server clients who are interested in retrieving FAQ-related information from a knowledge base, including things like the structure of the knowledge base and its feedback data
The Management API allows service components—such as content management systems, the Knowledge Center Administrator plugin, and data importers—to create, populate, and manage knowledge basess
The Reporting API provides reporting engines—such as Easy Pulse or third-party products—with data on the various knowledge-related activities carried out by agents and customers

Genesys Web Engagement Integration

While it isn't exactly a component, we thought this would be a good place to mention that you can integrate Knowledge Center with Genesys Web Engagement. GWE helps you monitor, identify, and proactively engage web visitors in conversations that match your business objectives. And Knowledge Center can be used with GWE to provide proactive engagement capabilities.

For more information, see how to integrate Knowledge Center with Genesys Web Engagement.