Skip to main content
Solved

How can I organize a large Knowledge Base so users can find articles quickly?

  • August 29, 2026
  • 1 reply
  • 10 views
Liza451
Apprentice

I’m looking for some best practices for organizing a growing Knowledge Base in Freshworks. As the number of articles increases, it can become difficult for users to quickly find the information they need.

What structure, categories, tags, or search practices do experienced Freshworks users recommend for keeping a Knowledge Base easy to navigate and maintain? Also, are there any common organization mistakes that should be avoided?

Best answer by Arputha G

Hi ​@Liza451,

Greetings from Freshworks Community!

I am sharing a few major callouts to keep in mind while organising articles in Freshdesk and a few practices:

1. Structuring articles based on Freshdesk Hierarchy:

Freshdesk organizes content into a 3-tier structure: Category > Folder > Article (More on article hierarchy is here)

  • Categories (Broad Topics): Keep top-level categories under 5 to 6 on your portal homepage. Use major user goals or product pillars (like “Getting Started”, “Billing & Account”, “Troubleshooting”).
  • Folders (Specific Focus): Group related articles together (For example, inside the Billing category, have all the billing related queries, FAQs, and procedural articles) to make it easier for customers to find articles and solutions to related issues.
    (Pro-Tip: Keep folders under 5–7 articles. If a folder expands beyond 10 articles, split it into sub-folders to prevent scrolling fatigue.)
  • Control Folder Visibility: Use Freshdesk’s Folder Permissions (All Users/Logged-in Users/Agents or Specific Companies) to keep internal agent SOPs and customer-facing guides, also different company-specific articles to relevant customers to prevent displaying too much information to them.

2. Search Optimization:

  • Action-Oriented Titles: Name articles based on user intent in simple, common man terms helps users get to their required article (e.g., "How to Reset Your Password" or "Fixing Error 500 During Login") rather than passive statements and complex sentences.
  • Fill Out the 'Keywords' Field: In the Freshdesk article editor's right sidebar, use the Tags field to add synonyms, jargon, and common misspellings that users might use to search a particular article (e.g., for an article titled “Updating Credit Card”, add keywords like “billing”, “receipt”, “mastercard”, “visa”, “payment failed” that could help users land this article when looking for related keywords in the search bar).
  • Enable Ticket Form Auto-Suggest: Go to Admin > Portals > Settings > and turn on “Auto-suggest solution articles while creating a ticket”. When users type a subject in the support portal, Freshdesk dynamically recommends relevant articles before they hit submit. This helps bring down time volume as well if the end user is able to help themselves with an article before raising a ticket.

3. Maintenance & Freshdesk Features:

  • Set Article Review Dates: Set up monthly/quarterly calendar reminders for articles so they are constantly updated with relevant information.
  • Use Drafts & Approval Workflows: For teams with multiple contributors, use Freshdesk's Knowledge Base Approval Workflow so articles require manager sign-off before publishing live. Approval workflow is available from the Enterprise plan onwards.
  • Track KB Analytics: We can use the Knowledge Base Analytics Report to review and track article views, helpful/unhelpful votes, and articles with most/least feedback. This would allow you to modify your articles to ensure the most useful content is published for your end users, based on how the articles are performing.
  • Knowledge base dashboard: We also have a knowledge base dashboard that enables managers and agents to understand the status of all the articles in the knowledge base at a quick glance. This can help them make a call on how to plan and allocate resources to manage the knowledge base effectively.

Common Mistakes to Avoid:

  1. Over-Categorising on the Homepage: Having a lot of top-level categories forces users to guess where to click. Also, keeping the structuring to a minimum allows users to find their required articles quicker and gives a pleasant self-service experience using the portal.
  2. Confusing Tags with Keywords: Tags in Freshdesk are primarily for internal reporting and agent filtering. Hence, we can avoid cluttering articles with dozens of tags —use the hidden Keywords field for search indexing (SEO) instead. The search bar on the portal picks up words based on the words used in the article subject and description.
  3. Keeping Outdated Articles: Leaving old articles live ruins search accuracy. Always Archive (rather than delete) deprecated articles so old URLs redirects accurately while keeping search results clean.

Please let me know if the above helps! Happy to hear from others from the community as well on any practises that they use to organise articles in their account.

 

Regards,
Arputha
Freshworks Community

    1 reply

    Community Manager
    Forum|alt.badge.img+4
    • Arputha GCommunity Manager
    • Community Manager
    • Answer
    • September 4, 2026

    Hi ​@Liza451,

    Greetings from Freshworks Community!

    I am sharing a few major callouts to keep in mind while organising articles in Freshdesk and a few practices:

    1. Structuring articles based on Freshdesk Hierarchy:

    Freshdesk organizes content into a 3-tier structure: Category > Folder > Article (More on article hierarchy is here)

    • Categories (Broad Topics): Keep top-level categories under 5 to 6 on your portal homepage. Use major user goals or product pillars (like “Getting Started”, “Billing & Account”, “Troubleshooting”).
    • Folders (Specific Focus): Group related articles together (For example, inside the Billing category, have all the billing related queries, FAQs, and procedural articles) to make it easier for customers to find articles and solutions to related issues.
      (Pro-Tip: Keep folders under 5–7 articles. If a folder expands beyond 10 articles, split it into sub-folders to prevent scrolling fatigue.)
    • Control Folder Visibility: Use Freshdesk’s Folder Permissions (All Users/Logged-in Users/Agents or Specific Companies) to keep internal agent SOPs and customer-facing guides, also different company-specific articles to relevant customers to prevent displaying too much information to them.

    2. Search Optimization:

    • Action-Oriented Titles: Name articles based on user intent in simple, common man terms helps users get to their required article (e.g., "How to Reset Your Password" or "Fixing Error 500 During Login") rather than passive statements and complex sentences.
    • Fill Out the 'Keywords' Field: In the Freshdesk article editor's right sidebar, use the Tags field to add synonyms, jargon, and common misspellings that users might use to search a particular article (e.g., for an article titled “Updating Credit Card”, add keywords like “billing”, “receipt”, “mastercard”, “visa”, “payment failed” that could help users land this article when looking for related keywords in the search bar).
    • Enable Ticket Form Auto-Suggest: Go to Admin > Portals > Settings > and turn on “Auto-suggest solution articles while creating a ticket”. When users type a subject in the support portal, Freshdesk dynamically recommends relevant articles before they hit submit. This helps bring down time volume as well if the end user is able to help themselves with an article before raising a ticket.

    3. Maintenance & Freshdesk Features:

    • Set Article Review Dates: Set up monthly/quarterly calendar reminders for articles so they are constantly updated with relevant information.
    • Use Drafts & Approval Workflows: For teams with multiple contributors, use Freshdesk's Knowledge Base Approval Workflow so articles require manager sign-off before publishing live. Approval workflow is available from the Enterprise plan onwards.
    • Track KB Analytics: We can use the Knowledge Base Analytics Report to review and track article views, helpful/unhelpful votes, and articles with most/least feedback. This would allow you to modify your articles to ensure the most useful content is published for your end users, based on how the articles are performing.
    • Knowledge base dashboard: We also have a knowledge base dashboard that enables managers and agents to understand the status of all the articles in the knowledge base at a quick glance. This can help them make a call on how to plan and allocate resources to manage the knowledge base effectively.

    Common Mistakes to Avoid:

    1. Over-Categorising on the Homepage: Having a lot of top-level categories forces users to guess where to click. Also, keeping the structuring to a minimum allows users to find their required articles quicker and gives a pleasant self-service experience using the portal.
    2. Confusing Tags with Keywords: Tags in Freshdesk are primarily for internal reporting and agent filtering. Hence, we can avoid cluttering articles with dozens of tags —use the hidden Keywords field for search indexing (SEO) instead. The search bar on the portal picks up words based on the words used in the article subject and description.
    3. Keeping Outdated Articles: Leaving old articles live ruins search accuracy. Always Archive (rather than delete) deprecated articles so old URLs redirects accurately while keeping search results clean.

    Please let me know if the above helps! Happy to hear from others from the community as well on any practises that they use to organise articles in their account.

     

    Regards,
    Arputha
    Freshworks Community

    Terms of UseAccessibility statement