Internal Knowledge Base: 2024’s Beginner’s Guide!

As companies grow and evolve, they often find themselves with a wealth of information and procedures that employees need to know and follow.

And things quickly become chaotic if left alone.

Creating an internal knowledge base helps solve this problem by centralizing your information and improving communication.

In this guide, you’ll find everything you need to know about the internal knowledge base, from what it is to how to create one.

What Is Internal Knowledge Base

An internal knowledge base is a centralized repository of information designed for use within an organization.

It contains company’s data, such as policies, best practices, training materials, product introductions, and regularly used processes.

Internal vs External Knowledge Base

The main difference between internal and external knowledge base is the ‘targeted audience’.

While the internal knowledge base is targeted for company employees, the external knowledge base is created for customers, clients, or public use.

The Benefits of Using an Internal Knowledge Base

There’s no denying that setting up and managing an internal knowledge base takes some time and effort. However, it offers far too many benefits for large to small businesses that cannot be neglected.

For example, from my personal experience, when you have to train new employees or interns and at the same time manage your KPIs (Key Performance Indicators), things get tricky very quickly.

Saying most time spent training new employees doesn’t cut it here and doesn’t sound professional.

Solution? Internal knowledge base. You convert regularly used processes into easy to understand SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures) and guides. That can be easily accessible with training materials.

Reducing the need of jumping on unnecessary calls or having one-on-one sessions.

Ultimately, an internal knowledge base can help streamline your communications and save time by speeding up employee training — a clear win-win!

Some other benefits are:

• Centralized information: Almost everything your employees need will be in one convenient location.
• Improve employee onboarding and training: Having newcomers get up to speed on their role by reading your documentation can save both time and money on training.
• Improve workflows: Having an organized hub for your procedures and practices can eliminate any wasted time spent searching for documents.
• Less internal support requests: Providing easy access to most common documents and question answers will ultimately reduce the need for internal support.
• Supports Remote and Distributed Teams: With an online knowledge base, employees can access corporate knowledge from anywhere.
• Knowledge Retention and Transfer: Even when key employees leave, their knowledge doesn’t disappear. Allowing new employees to access valuable information and start as soon as possible.
• Cost Savings: A good knowledge base will avoid the need of costly training sessions, internal support, and redundant communication.

Examples of Internal Knowledge Base Resources

Here are some common documents that you will find or should have in your internal knowledge base.

1. Company Policies and Procedures

Policies and procedures provide clear guidelines for employee conduct, responsibilities, and the overall functioning of the organization.

Examples:

• HR Policies
• Code of Conduct
• Employee Benefits and Compensation
• Employee Performance and Evaluation Procedures
• Remote Work Policies
• Expense and Reimbursement Policies
• Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Policies

2. Training Materials

Training materials help new employees adjust to the company processes and develop new skills.

It also allows companies to assess the skills and adaptability of employees before investing more time.

Examples:

• Job-specific tools and guides
• Communication guidelines
• Job-specific tasks
• Training courses
• Training manuals

3. FAQs

Answering common questions through the knowledge base reduces the need for human support.

Examples:

• Common questions such as: benefits, payroll, time off, internal tools, and employee perks.
• Remote work related questions
• Performance and career development related questions

4. Product or Service Documentation

This type of knowledge is also available to customers, clients and public users.

Its purpose is to provide detailed information about the company’s products and services.

Examples:

• Product overview and features
• Getting started guides
• Product roadmaps
• Product comparisons
• Customer personas and use cases (mostly for internal use)
• Troubleshooting and support documentation
• Training and tutorials
• API documentation (for developers)

5. Onboarding and Offboarding Materials

Having onboarding and offboarding resources in hand streamlines the entire process of integrating new employees into the organization and ensures a smooth transition when employees leave.

Examples:

• Checklist to follow when onboarding or offboarding employees
• Company introduction
• Employee handbook
• Role-specific onboarding plans
• Short and long term goals
• Tools and software access
• Knowledge transfer and best practices

6. Department Specific Resources

The knowledge base can be tailored to meet the specific needs of any department. It can include resources to help teams perform day-to-day functions, improving productivity, consistency, and knowledge retention.

Examples:

• Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs)
• Workflows
• Templates (job description, email, sales pitch, website)
• Tools and software
• Guidelines (performance reviews, hiring, interviewing, partnering, product testing)
• Playbooks
• Best practices (coding standards, customer relations)

How to Create an Internal Knowledge Base

I’ve tried to be as detailed as possible from my own experience, so don’t skip any steps.

Step 1. Define Knowledge Base Purpose and Goals

Before starting any major project or system, it’s best to identify key objectives.

Ask yourself a few questions:

• Is this the solution you are looking for?
• Is there any better option?
• Are you able to invest the needed time and money?

It will help you outline the expected outcome.

With an internal knowledge base, you can aim to centralize knowledge, streamline processes, information sharing, and knowledge retention.

Step 2. Identify Core Topics and Content

The main thing you are going to host on a knowledge base is content, in a written, video, or visual format. And lots of it!

Identifying core topics will help you plan structure and requirements.

Ask for every department to list all their day-to-day workflows, documents, SOPs, and guides.

Get these documents created or updated, and try to involve as many employees as possible in the start, especially key members that are managing and taking decisions.

Step 3. Create Content Structure, Templates

It’s important to provide everything you think employees will need without overwhelming them.

And it can only be achieved with the right structure.

It’s better to do this before starting a knowledge base site, as you may be stuck with limited functionality based on your software choice.

Here’s how you can organize content:

1. Create a Logical Content Hierarchy

Plan a structured organization with categories, subcategories, and articles for easy navigation.

I’m assuming you are at least looking for an internal knowledge base for a small or large organization. So, organize your content based on the type of content and departments your organization has.

For example, you can create the following categories

• Company policies and procedures
• Human resources
• Sales and Marketing resources
• Developer resources
• Custom service resources
• Design style guides
• Quality analysis (QA) guidelines

2. List Important Articles on Top

Make it easy for employees to easily access important articles.

3. Create Templates

With templates, you will have consistency across various types of documents.

Here’s a common template that is used for most knowledge base articles, or the one that works best for us.

It includes:

1. Ajax search bar: Powerful search bar for employees to easily find any document.
2. Breadcrumbs
3. Title: That is easy to understand and straightforward.
4. Intro or goals: Brief introduction about what to expect from a document or specific goals that need to be achieved with it.
5. Main content: Offer step-by-step instructions without any fluff.
6. Feedback system: So employees can leave feedback and the editor can understand if that specific document is useful or not.
7. Related articles
8. Visual elements / building blocks: It will allow easy time reading through documents, and help improve user experience.
   
   You can create reusable blocks for the following types of content:
   1. Key notes or information
   2. Lists, and steps
   3. Headings
   4. Frequently asked questions
   5. Code snippet
9. Table of contents and an option to reach human support: Best to add it through sticky sidebar.

You can create multiple templates for different types of documents that work best for your organization. Some examples are:

• SOPs
• Glossary of terms
• Frequently asked questions

Make sure you have consistency across various templates. Making it too different will make it complicated for everyone.

4. Create Roles

Not all employees need access to all the options.

Some will require access to just view frontend articles, and some will need to develop a knowledge base system.

Based on requirements, create a proper role structure:

• Who will develop the knowledge base?
• Who will create and publish content?
• Who will be responsible for managing and updating content?

And so on.

Step 4. Choose the Internal Knowledge Base Software

Using a dedicated, constantly accessible solution to build your internal knowledgebase is likely to provide you with a hassle-free experience and relevant functionality.

Looking at the complexity and the feature requirements, you should probably choose a premium solution.

Heroic Knowledge Base could be the solution you are looking for. It offers all the necessary features that we discussed above.

Just to recap, here are what features you should look for in a internal knowledge base software:

• User roles and access control
• Powerful search bar (Ajax based)
• Flexible and customizable
  • Ability to create an internal or public knowledge base
  • Layouts, templates, sections, and design freedom
  • Code free environment
• Dedicated visual elements / building blocks
• Feedback system

And Heroic KB fulfills all of these requirements while remaining budget-friendly.

Note: We have listed some more internal knowledge base software below, check them out.

Step 5. Create WordPress Website

Now that we have a plan ready, let’s start building an internal knowledge base website.

WordPress is the best choice for beginners or power users alike. It’s a robust content management system that you can shape however you like with plugins and themes.

We are going to use Heroic Knowledge Base for this tutorial. Since it’s one of the WordPress plugins, you will need a WordPress website.

You can install WordPress on any hosting platform of your choice. Most of them allow you to set up WordPress from their dashboard.

We recommend Kinsta WordPress hosting, as it offers reliability and performance needed for any kind of website.

Furthermore, you can check this tutorial if you are planning to manually install WordPress.

Tip: Just ask your hosting provider to set up a WordPress website for you, and they will gladly do it for you!

Step 6. Install Knowledge Base plugin and demo template

Once you have the Heroic KB plugin .zip file ready:

Note: You can purchase the Heroic KB plugin from here.

1. Head over to WordPress Dashboard by adding “/wp-admin” to the end of your website URL.
2. Click on the Plugins → Add New Plugin.
3. Click on the Upload Plugin button.
4. Choose a downloaded Heroic KB plugin file.
5. Click the Install Now button.
6. After installation, just click on the Activate Plugin button.

After plugin installation, you will be promoted with a setup wizard. Follow the steps and install the demo template.

Note: Get the license key from the Downloads section of your account. And if you have missed the setup wizard, you can access it from the WordPress Dashboard → Plugins section.

After completing the setup wizard, you can access your knowledge base by visiting yourdomain.com/knowledge-base/.

Step 7. Set up Permissions and Access Controls

Since we are creating an internal knowledge base, the main thing we are looking for is functionality to restrict user access. To provide access only to employees of the organization or selected users.

Here are a few things you can do with your newly created knowledge base system, to make it internal.

1. Restrict Knowledge Base Access

To restrict access to your knowledge base:

1. Visit WordPress Dashboard.
2. Click on Heroic KB → Settings.
3. In the General Settings, you will find an option to Restrict Access, which allows you to set content visibility only for logged-in users.
4. Hit the Save Changes button after done.

Now only logged-in users will be able to see your knowledge base content from the front end. And you can control who gets access.

2. Create and manage Users, Roles and Access

By going to Dashboard → Users, you can create multiple users with different roles and access.

For example, the Editor role, which can upload and update knowledge base articles, or the Administrator role, which has full control over the portal.

To create new users, just click on the Add New User button, and fill out the necessary details.

You can learn more about User Roles here in the official guide.

Step 8. Customize Overall Look

With Heroic KB you can do much more than just customize the colors of your knowledge base.

To customize the knowledge base to your liking, just visit WordPress Dashboard → Heroic KB → Settings.

Let’s go through a few scenarios so you can get an idea of how things work.

1. Colors

To update knowledge base colors:

1. Visit WordPress Dashboard
2. Click on Heroic KB → Settings
3. Click on Appearance tab

Here you can update the colors used for the knowledge base and manage a bunch of other settings.

2. Sidebars

Want to add a sidebar, make it sticky, or get rid of it completely? Check out these settings:

1. Visit WordPress Dashboard
2. Click on Heroic KB → Settings
3. Click on General tab
4. In the General Settings, you will find the options to manage sidebar settings.
5. Click the Save Changes button to reflect settings.

Furthermore, you can edit sidebar content by visiting: Appearance → Widgets.

Step 9. Start Publishing Knowledge Base Articles

Now that you are familiar with your new system, you are ready to start publishing content.

You can manage all knowledge base content, from Dashboard → Heroic KB. Including articles, categories, and tags.

To add a new article: Go to Heroic KB → Add New Article.

This will take you to the article editing screen. Here you can design your article the way you want.

• You can add normal content like headings, paragraphs, images, lists, or create engaging layouts with containers, columns and tables.
• You can also password protect that specific article by accessing the Status settings.
• Set appropriate categories and tags.
• And a bunch of other settings.

Once done, simply hit the publish button from the top bar to make it live.

To adjust the article ordering in the category archive page: Go to Heroic KB → Article Ordering.

Here you can set the order in which articles are displayed, so that important content appears at the top.

Step 10. Promote Continuous Improvement

Despite your best intentions, you still might have content that’s confusing in places, missing key information, or not being used as intended.

Listening to (and implementing) user feedback is an excellent way to combat this problem. You can provide your employees with a way to comment on and respond to your knowledge base by:

• Including a feedback system in the knowledge base itself.
• Conducting periodic surveys of everyone who uses the knowledge base. Ask questions about their experience, along with what parts they find helpful or confusing.
• Offer users greater access to the knowledge base if possible, so they can comment directly on articles and documents, or even edit them in certain cases.

By default, knowledge bases created with Heroic KB will have a feedback system enabled. Which you can control for every article and manage overall settings from Heroic KB → Settings.

An effective knowledge base needs to grow and evolve over time, just as your company does. Making sure everyone contributes to its upkeep will stand you in good stead over the long haul.

Best Internal Knowledge Base Software Options

There are plenty of internal knowledge base software options available on the market, including free ones. Here are some that we think are the best.

1. Heroic Knowledge base

Without a doubt, Heroic KB is one of the best choices as it has all the features you will ever need.

It’s a robust knowledge base solution that is flexible and easy to set up.

The Heroic KB plans start at $149.50 / year. Which is more affordable than any SaaS knowledge base software and good enough for small to large sized businesses.

2. Google Docs and Sheets

You may already have used Google Docs and Sheets before, or using it right now.

No doubt it’s one of the best free tools for creating and sharing documents.

With the right control and management, you can use these tools as your internal knowledge base solution.

Create and manage documents, permissions, and roles with Google Docs and keep track of all your documents with Google Sheets.

3. MkDocs

MkDocs is a static site generator, especially for creating knowledge base, documentation. It’s a free tool.

Similar to WordPress, you can customize the look and functionality of your site with themes and plugins. However, you absolutely need to understand coding and require developer help.

If you have an in-house development team, try out this free documentation tool.

Final Thoughts

Organization and communication are key to keeping your business running smoothly. Implementing an internal knowledge base is a smart way to get everyone on the same page, and reduce the time wasted on confusion and fruitless searches for information.

By creating an internal knowledge base portal, you set your processes and teams for success. Focusing on continuous improvement instead of reinventing the wheel every time 🛞.

Keep these key tips in mind as you plan out your internal knowledge base:

1. Carefully select the information to be included.
2. Seek out reliable knowledge base software (such as Heroic KB).
3. Set up and maintain an efficient structure.
4. Provide an avenue for staff feedback.

Do you have any questions about implementing an internal knowledge base? Let us know in the comments section below!