Knowledge Management Goals: How to Enhance Your Confluence Knowledge Base in the New Year (or Anytime!)

Picture this: it’s one year from today, and your knowledge base is a powerhouse. 

Users can quickly find what they need, are unlikely to find outdated content, and go to your knowledge base as their first stop for information. 

While they may not give you a standing ovation, they’ll pepper you with small compliments like “it just works.” 

To solidify the win, you’ve tracked measurable improvements on items like ticket deflection, content freshness, and engagement. 

Sounds great, right? In the following post, we’re giving you the playbook to get there with Confluence and Gliffy. 

Step 1: Create Clear Goals for Your Knowledge Base  

Brainstorm goals that connect to metrics you can measure (also known as SMART goals). 

Here are a few ideas to get you started:  

• Impact & Effectiveness Goals 

  • Increase the number of tickets deflected, tracked by Atlassian’s out-of-the-box report in JSM. 

  • Improve search success percentage, using Atlassian Analytics to identify the number of searches within your knowledge base that result in clicks. 

• Engagement Goals 

  • Increase views of a specific Confluence space.  

  • Increase the number of monthly active users in specific spaces or across the site. 

• Content Quality Goals 

  • Reduce your “last updated” metric for all or a subset of content.  

  • Create benchmarks for the percentage of content with a table of contents, following a specific title or content structure, or including graphics like diagrams to make information more memorable.  

You can also pursue qualitative results by regularly surveying your users about the impact of your knowledge base, although this can be time-intensive.  

Step 2: Implement Best Practices that Match Your Goals 

Based on your priorities for your knowledge base, you can commit to different tasks that will help you meet your goals. 

Do you want to increase search success and the effectiveness of your content?  

• Develop a consistent naming structure for all content in your database.  

• Establish a standard page template for key content types (FAQs, how-tos, project charters, etc.). 

• Ensure content has an up-top executive summary or statement of what’s included (Rovo can help you generate these based on page content).  

Are you looking to increase engagement?  

• Clean up spaces and page trees to ensure that one page a user needs isn’t hiding 8 levels down in the page hierarchy.  

• Add templates across common content such as IT FAQs to help users understand what to expect from each page.  

Is your content in dire need of a refresh?  

• Create an audit cadence and time-block it now! 

• Reassign page owners to ensure any content from deactivated users has a new owner. 

• Put significant updates on a content roadmap for the year.  

Step 3: Make Knowledge Visual, Powered by Gliffy 

When you’ve set goals for ticket deflection or increased engagement, visuals like diagrams are proven to help users quickly understand technical concepts or complex processes. When you give your users clear, helpful info, they’ll keep coming back.  

Adding diagrams to your content ensures your users aren’t facing a formidable wall of text while they’re just trying to figure out how to reset their password. 

Here are a few examples of diagrams that you can add to your knowledge base today to enhance the content already there.  

• Decision flowcharts for common triage paths.  

• Swimlane diagrams to clarify handoffs and SLAs.  

• Architecture and network diagrams alongside troubleshooting for environmental context. 

Mermaid and AI built into Gliffy provide shortcuts that can help you create these diagrams using only your keyboard—no need to drag and drop individual shapes.  

Setting Your Plan in Action 

Now that you have your goals and your tactics in place, the final consideration is making sure the work gets done and you’re getting value from it.  

Here are a few ways to establish accountability for your knowledge base goals and make them more manageable for you to achieve day-to-day. 

1. Establish a measurement schedule.  

How often will you measure the success of your work? For example, you can set a reminder to review ticket deflection stats, search success percentage, or other measures of success you’ve set monthly or quarterly. 

2. Break down larger initiatives into smaller sprints.  

If one of your goals is to add diagrams to a certain percentage of your content, you can tackle a few pages at a time every week rather than trying to find time to update your entire knowledge base in one day. 

3. Create a stakeholder map.  

Who are your content editors? Who needs to know when you make changes to your knowledge base? A stakeholder map can help you make sure you’re keeping these people in the loop, especially if you have to work through multiple subject matter experts to make updates.