Knowledge Management Glossary

An AI chatbot is software that uses artificial intelligence to understand human language, context, and inquiries and provide answers as text or voice responses.

An AI-powered knowledge base uses artificial intelligence for knowledge management processes such as capturing, storing, organizing, and retrieving knowledge.

An article helpfulness score measures an article's usefulness from the reader's point of view based on whether the content satisfies the user's need.

A call center knowledge base is a central repository of an organization's policies, user guides, FAQs, and troubleshooting. Support agents use it to clarify callers' queries.

A chief knowledge officer is an authoritative person who is responsible for capturing, managing, retrieving, and storing the organization's intellectual capital assets.

Chunking is the process of dividing a large group of information into smaller pieces of elements containing meaningful information.

A cloud-hosted knowledge base is a knowledge repository hosted on a cloud server rather than on the organization's local server.

Collaboration tools are communication platforms that connect departments across an organization and help them interact and complete tasks to achieve the organization's goals.

A company wiki is a shared digital space where employees can create, edit, and update information together.

Consulting knowledge management is a system used to capture, process, store, and retrieve a consulting firm's information.

A content approval workflow is a step-by-step process for reviewing and approving content before it is added to a knowledge base.

A content audit is a process of evaluating knowledge base articles to identify duplicates, outdated, and obsolete content, and recording it for future updates.

Content freshness describes digital content based on its accuracy, reliability, and up-to-date nature.

The content lifecycle is a sequence of workflows that manage content from creation through review, publication, updates, and eventual archiving or removal.

A content management system is a software application that lets users create, publish, and manage website content without building it from scratch.

A controlled vocabulary is a collection of pre-approved terms that is used to index, organize, and retrieve information.

Cross-functional knowledge sharing is the process of exchanging information, skills, expertise, and knowledge between different departments of the organization.

A customer knowledge base is a centralized collection of information about products and services curated to resolve customer queries.

Data fragmentation is a state where the information related to a single subject is distributed across multiple databases, digital files, folders, and even physical binders.

Data governance is a framework of rules, policies, and processes that maintains the organization's data accuracy, security, consistency, and reliability.

Data retention is the practice of storing and maintaining information for a set period based on legal, regulatory, or business requirements, then securely deleting it when the retention period ends.

A document management system is a software application that is used to store, update, track, and retrieve documents digitally to eliminate the need for paper documents.

An ecommerce knowledge base is a centralized repository of information about orders, answers to common questions about orders, shipping details, returns, and payments in the form of FAQs, policies, and product documents.

Embeddings are representations of text as vectors of floating-point numbers. They are used in Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), text classification, and more.

An employee knowledge base is a private, internal knowledge base that helps employees create, store, process, retrieve, update, and manage resources like information, policies, and SOPs.

Employee onboarding is the process of making a newly hired employee an integral part of the organization's workplace and a fully productive team member.

An internal knowledge base repository designed specifically for engineering, technical, and development teams to store, organize, and share technical documentation.

A centralized repository where an organization stores, organizes, and manages internal knowledge like policies, procedures, technical documents, FAQs, and employee guides. Authorized employees can easily find and use the information they need across the organization.

Enterprise search is a technique used to retrieve information across the organization's internal knowledge sources.

Explicit knowledge is quantitative knowledge that can be documented, recorded in a form that can be easily stored, shared, and accessed.

An external knowledge base is a central repository of information about products and services that people outside the organization can access.

Faceted search is a technique used to narrow down the search results by applying specific filters such as category, date, file type, author, or department.

Frequently asked questions are a collection of commonly asked questions and answers that help users find information quickly without needing direct assistance.

First contact resolution is a metric used to measure the percentage of customer issues resolved during the first interaction with a support agent.

Folksonomy is a method of classifying digital content using user-created tags to make it easier to locate.

Generative AI is an artificial intelligence system that is used to generate text, images, videos, audio, and computer code based on the dataset it was trained on.

Grounded answers are responses generated by an AI system using information retrieved from trusted source documents rather than unsupported or assumed information.

A help center is an online resource that contains information about products and services in the form of FAQs, troubleshooting guides, and user manuals used to resolve users' questions without a support agent.

How-to guides are documented resources that contain a step-by-step process for completing a task.

An HR knowledge base is a centralized repository of HR-related information, including company policies, employee benefits, leave procedures, onboarding guides, and workplace guidelines.

Hybrid search combines traditional keyword search and semantic search to retrieve relevant information from the knowledge base.

Implicit knowledge is qualitative knowledge that exists inside a person but is difficult to document formally because it comes from years of experience, practice, and observation.

Information architecture is the practice of digitally organizing, structuring, and labeling information into a centralized platform.

Information overload is a condition in which the volume of information exceeds a capacity to process it effectively, making it difficult to identify relevant information.

Information retrieval is the process of finding relevant information from a repository. It also involves organizing, storing, and evaluating information.

An information silo is a situation in which information is stored across multiple disconnected systems, making it difficult to obtain information on time.

Institutional knowledge is collective knowledge the organization gains through years of experience, people, processes, and practical demonstration.

Intellectual capital is a collection of the organization's intangible assets such as patents, copyrights, trademarks, trade secrets, and industrial design.

An internal knowledge base is a private repository of information about company policies, SOPs, IT documents, product specifications, and other internal information related to the organization.

An internal wiki is a central hub of information built and used privately within an organization.

An intranet is a private network used within an organization to collaborate, communicate, and share information with authorized users.

ISO 30401 is the first internationally recognized standard dedicated exclusively to maintaining, reviewing, and continually improving knowledge management systems.

ITIL knowledge management is the practice of collecting, organizing, storing, capturing, and sharing information within the information technology infrastructure library.

ITSM knowledge management is the practice of collecting, organizing, storing, and updating information within information technology service management. This helps IT teams to resolve incidents, manage service requests, and deliver consistent support.

Knowledge acquisition is the process of gathering information from various sources, such as people, processes, digital files, and paper records, to maintain the value of the organization's knowledge sources.

Knowledge application is the process of applying information gained through processes, people, experience, and observation to complete tasks.

Knowledge articles are structured articles drafted to educate, provide information, and offer solutions on a particular topic, enabling users to meet their needs on that topic.

Knowledge assets are information, expertise, and intellectual property the organization uses in decision-making to drive profit.

Knowledge audit is the process of evaluating the knowledge preserved in the knowledge base, people, and experts. It supports identifying knowledge gaps, duplication, and accessibility issues, and improves knowledge management.

Knowledge automation is the practice of using software, artificial intelligence, or other automated workflows to collect, organize, capture, and update knowledge without manual effort.

A knowledge base is a central repository that lets users store, capture, organize, update, and retrieve relevant information when they need it.

Knowledge base analytics is the measurement and analysis of how users, search engines, and AI systems interact with your knowledge base.

Knowledge brokers are people who act as a bridge between knowledge producers (such as researchers, scientists) and knowledge users (such as policymakers, business leaders).

Knowledge capture is the process of identifying, collecting, and preserving the knowledge from a single source or the entire organization.

A knowledge champion is a title given to an employee who excels in knowledge management and serves as a representative who initiates knowledge sharing to drive KM practices across the organization.

Knowledge creation is a continuous process of generating new ideas, undiscovered processes, and innovation concepts based on what is already known.

Knowledge curation is the process of identifying, filtering, and maintaining knowledge in a knowledge base.

Knowledge discovery is the process of finding information buried in existing sources and in undiscovered fields.

The knowledge economy is an economic value that drives profit by contributing the organization's capital to knowledge management.

A knowledge gap is a condition that mainly happens due to a lack of information, skills, expertise, or understanding needed to perform a task, make a decision, or achieve a specific goal.

Knowledge gap analysis is the process of evaluating and identifying knowledge buried across multiple sources in the organization.

A knowledge graph is a structured way of connecting information between entities with well-defined relationships.

Knowledge harvesting is the process of collecting, capturing, and gathering knowledge from people, processes, and workflows of the organization and making it available for future use.

Knowledge hoarding is a condition that happens when a person intentionally holds knowledge and does not share it or contribute it to the organization.

The knowledge lifecycle is a systematic, step-by-step process that moves knowledge from creation to archiving and deletion across the knowledge base or the organization.

Knowledge loss is the loss of information that happens through erosion in many forms, such as knowledge leaving with an individual, undocumented processes, and disruptions in documenting workflows.

Knowledge management is a process that includes capturing, storing, managing, organizing, and retrieving knowledge in an organization.

A knowledge management framework is a blueprint with structured guidelines for capturing, organizing, storing, and retrieving knowledge.

A knowledge management maturity model is a structured representation of knowledge that evaluates an organization's knowledge management capabilities, processes, and practices across different maturity levels to identify gaps and guide continuous improvement.

Knowledge management ROI is the financial return that your organization gets on investing resources in knowledge management.

A structured approach to capturing, storing, managing, organizing, and retrieving information to add value to the organization.

Knowledge management software is an application used to capture, store, manage, organize, and retrieve information from the knowledge sources it ingests.

A knowledge manager is a person responsible for capturing, organizing, managing, and updating information in the knowledge repository. They build knowledge management strategies, maintain knowledge management tools, and track metrics.

Knowledge mapping is a visual representation of what knowledge exists, who holds it, and where it is stored. This technique is usually used to uncover hidden knowledge.

Knowledge organization is the process of categorizing, arranging, and structuring information in the knowledge repository.

A knowledge owner is a person responsible for managing, reviewing, and updating knowledge within a specific domain to ensure its accuracy, relevance, and reliability.

A knowledge repository is a centralized system or location used to store, organize, and provide access to an organization's knowledge and information.

Knowledge retention is the process of preserving valuable organizational assets such as skills, expertise, and information within the organization.

Knowledge retrieval is the process of finding the relevant information in a particular field or domain from a knowledge repository.

Knowledge reuse is the practice of reusing previously acquired knowledge to perform a task or make a decision to solve a problem.

Knowledge sharing is the formal process of transferring knowledge through a physical or digital communication medium between two or more people.

A knowledge silo is a situation where information or expertise gets buried with a single individual, a team, or a department and isn't shared with the rest of the organization.

Knowledge storage is the structured process of capturing and storing information in a centralized knowledge repository.

Knowledge synthesis is the process of combining information from different knowledge sources of the same domain to create a clear understanding of a topic.

Knowledge workers are people who use skills, expertise, and knowledge gained over the years as a primary source to generate valuable insights for the organization.

LLMs are artificial intelligence models trained on large datasets of information to generate text in human-understandable language.

Legal knowledge management is the process of capturing, organizing, storing, managing, and retrieving legal information from the law firm's central repository.

Marketing knowledge management is the process of capturing, organizing, storing, managing, and retrieving marketing-related information such as campaign reports, brand guidelines, customer personas, content briefs, and marketing strategies.

Metadata is descriptive information about a particular entity, such as data context, including its source, author, creation date, file type, or category.

Natural language processing is a branch of artificial intelligence that deals with machine learning and linguistics to enable computers to understand, interpret, analyze, and generate human language.

Natural language queries are questions asked in everyday human language rather than using technical keywords.

It is a centralized repository that contains information consistent across multiple channels and acts as a single source of truth.

An ontology is a structural framework that defines how concepts relate to each other.

Organizational knowledge is information gained from people, processes, and workflows used to make decisions about how the organization functions.

Organizational memory is accumulated past findings, knowledge, processes, and workflows gained over years of experience.

Tools designed to help individuals collect, organize, store, capture, and retrieve information based on their day-to-day personal and professional needs.

Procedural knowledge is step-by-step knowledge used to demonstrate a particular task or workflow.

Product documentation is a structured process of documenting the product's features, functionality, technical architecture, and instructions on how to use it.

Project knowledge management is the process of capturing, storing, organizing, and retrieving project-related information from planning through deployment.

Release notes are technical documents that describe software updates, product launches, or bug fixes, detailing the specific changes, improvements, and new features introduced in a particular software product.

RAG is an AI technique that retrieves relevant information from documents in a knowledge base and uses it to generate accurate, grounded answers to user queries.

Role-based access control is a security mechanism that grants access to a resource based on a user's role.

A sales knowledge base is a central repository of information on product pricing, customer inquiries, generated leads, email messaging templates, and more.

A metric used to measure user satisfaction with the search results that match their query and with their engagement with those results.

A knowledge management framework that shows how an organization creates and shares knowledge by combining tacit knowledge and explicit knowledge.

A second brain acts as a secondary digital place to capture, organize, store, and retrieve information, ideas, notes, and knowledge so people do not have to rely entirely on their memory.

A self-hosted knowledge base is a knowledge repository hosted on the organization's local server.

A self-service knowledge base is a central repository of FAQs, user manuals, how-to articles, and troubleshooting guides that customers use to resolve their queries.

Semantic search is a search methodology that retrieves relevant information based on the query's context, not keywords.

Single sign-on is an authentication method that lets users log in to multiple software applications with the same credentials.

A single source of truth is a centralized trusted source of information.

A Source citation is a reference that links to the original document or information source used to generate an answer.

Standard operating procedures are structured, step-by-step processes for executing a complex task, with warning signs and a clear way to overcome obstacles.

A style guide is a manual of standards, rules, and design principles that maintain consistency across an organization's content.

A subject matter expert is an individual with specialized knowledge, skill, or experience in a particular field.

Succession planning is the process of preparing an employee with necessary skills and training to replace a current employee who leaves, retires, or moves to other positions.

Tacit knowledge is knowledge that is gained through intuition, personal experience, years of practice, and observation that is difficult to document.

Tagging is the process of assigning relevant labels to content to make it easier to categorize, search, and retrieve information.

Taxonomy is a practice of classifying information based on a specific hierarchical framework.

Technical documentation is a process of documenting functionality, architecture, or the creation of a technical product or service.

Time to productivity is the time required to complete a particular task and achieve the goal effectively.

Training documentation is the process of documenting instructional materials, guides, and modules designed to help individuals acquire the specific skills, knowledge, or competencies needed to perform a role or use a system.

Troubleshooting guides provide step-by-step instructions that help users identify the cause of a problem and find the appropriate solution.

User manuals provide step-by-step instructions to configure and set up a product or service.

A vector database stores, manages, and searches information as numerical representations called vectors.

Version control is the process of tracking and managing every historical change made to a file, document, or collection of source code over time.

The Zettelkasten method is a note-making and knowledge management methodology that helps people capture ideas, connect related information, and develop new insights over time.