Admin Area (Back-End); Common Actions

This article describes the Admin area home page and reviews the standard information you see and actions you can perform throughout the Admin area.

Home page

When you log in to the Admin area you see the Home page:

This page has three tabs: Dashboard, Statistics, and Set Up Tests.

To adjust the information that appears on the Dashboard or Statistics tab, select that tab, then click the Customize this Page button. In the form that appears check the check boxes beside the information that you want to display. Any changes you make take effect when you dismiss the form.

Dashboard tab

This tab displays a summary of content created by or assigned to you, including your articles and files in draft form, published articles, and articles and files assigned to you for approval. The content is grouped within each category by status. Click any link to see a detailed list of the content in that category and status.

Statistics tab

This tab displays counts of articles, files, and users in various categories. Click on any link to see more details. If you are logged in as an Admin user, you see information for the whole knowledgebase; otherwise you see statistics for your own articles and files only.

Set Up tests tab

The Set Up tests tab lets you review how your knowledgebase is set up, and test that all elements are working as they should. See Setup tests.

Common actions in the Admin area

This section reviews information you can see and actions you can take in the Admin area of KBPublisher. The image shows the article screen because it has the most functionality, but the explanations are applicable for working with files and feedback in the knowledgebase as well.

The main section of the display is a list, in this case of the articles in your knowledgebase.

Right-click any item in a list in the Admin area to display a context menu. From that menu you can select options like opening the link you clicked in a new window.

For many columns, you can sort the list by the values in that column by clicking the column header. Click again to reverse the sort order.

You can filter the list using one or all of the fields at the top of the tab:

• Category - select a category to display only records in that category. Check the check box to the right of the field to also display records in subcategories of the category you select.
• Status - select a status to see only records with that status.
• Type - select:
  • All types (the default)
  • a type to see records with that type assigned.
  • Any type assigned to see records which have any type assigned to them.
  • No type assigned to see only records that do not have a type assigned to them.
• Search - enter keywords to search for content with that text in their title or body. Put * as a wildcard before and/or after the string you enter to broaden the search ("*health*") would return content with "health", "unhealthy", and "healthcare", among other words.

Click the > button to filter the list. To return to the full list, remove entries to all filter fields and click > again.

To create a new record, click Add new and complete the form that appears.

You can adjust how many items appear on each page by changing the number in the Records per page field. You can browse from page to page using the << and >> buttons, or by choosing a number from the Pages dropdown list.

The display gives you information about each article (in this example), including:

• Item ID.
• If the article is scheduled a clock icon.
• If the article is private, a key icon.
• The article's type, if it has one.
• When the article was created and most recently updated.
• The article's title. Click the title to see the article.
• The article's category. If it is in more than one category, the number of categories also appears in square brackets. Click the category name to see just the articles in that category.
• The number of views the article has had.
• If readers have rated the article, its rating and the number of votes received.
• If the article has attachments, the number of attachments.
• The article's status, indicated by a block of color. Hover the mouse pointer over the color to see what the color represents.
• If past versions of the article are available, a history icon appears. Hover the mouse pointer over it to see the number of past versions, or click the icon to learn more about past versions or to read them.

You can perform certain actions on the articles in the list. Click the icon in the Action column for an article and choose from the available options, such as Preview and Edit.

You can also perform some actions, such as Set Status, on several articles at the same time. To do this, check the check box at the left end of the row for each article you want to act on, and pick the action from the Actions with selected menu at the bottom of the list.