Building a Knowledge Hub Like a Michelin-Star Restaurant

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What do a Knowledge Hub and a restaurant have in common? A lot, actually!

Imagine a restaurant. The kitchen full of activity, refining raw ingredients into perfect dishes. Guests enjoy seamless service in the dining area, unaware of the hard work behind the scenes.

Your Knowledge Hub is like this. The kitchen handles drafts and approvals, the dining area serves polished internal resources, and the delivery service packages content for external users.

In this article, I’ll show you how to build a Knowledge Hub as organized and efficient as a great restaurant, using some tasty tools from our Atlassian Community. Let’s get started!

1. Structure: Organizing the Knowledge Hub

A restaurant is a carefully orchestrated system. Chefs refine secret recipes behind the scenes, while guests enjoy the finished dishes, unaware of the controlled chaos in the kitchen. Success depends on seamless workflows - from cooking to service to delivery.

Your Knowledge Hub works the same way, turning raw ideas into polished content:

1. The Kitchen (Drafts & Approvals): Where raw information is developed and refined, accessible only to key team members.
2. The Dining Area (Internal Knowledge Base): Approved content is served to internal teams, like dishes delivered to tables.
3. The Delivery Service (External Documentation): Final content is packaged and shared with external audiences.

By organizing these areas with clear workflows and roles, you ensure efficiency, security, and a great experience for all users.

The Kitchen: Drafts & Approvals

Purpose: This is where the raw ingredients (drafts) are refined into finished dishes (approved content).

So, fellow sous chefs, how do we do this? I would suggest the following tools for managing your drafts and approval process:

• Dedicated space for your drafts will separate the creation process from anything else to ensure that only right people can edit and contribute to the content.
• Workflows for Confluence: Automate approvals through stages like Draft → In Review → Approved. Once approved, a document automatically publishes to another space so users will be able to see only approved documents.
• Compliance for Confluence: Add classification levels like Internal Only or Highly Confidential, ensuring restricted access to sensitive content.
• Labels: Use tags like “HR”, “IT”, or “Finance” to label document within a particular area.

Example: A draft policy document with a “Draft” status is assigned a reviewer via Workflows for Confluence. Once approved, it’s moved to the Internal Knowledge Base.

The Dining Area: Internal Knowledge Base

Purpose: This is where prepared dishes (finalized documents) are available for internal teams to consume. The ambiance (design and categorization) matters here to ensure easy navigation.

Again, there are a lot of tools out there to help you with this and my picks are below:

• Dedicated space for Internal Knowledge Base, not accessible externally, making sure to keep information within the company.
• Aura Cards by Seibert Media: Create visually engaging links to key sections or topics.
• SubSpace Navigation app by Communardo: Create your own custom navigation menus, to help team members across the organization find the content they need.
• Templates: Standardize the format of internal documents such as meeting notes or project plans.

Example: An onboarding guide for new hires is visually categorized under HR Resources with intuitive Aura Cards.

Delivery Service: External Documentation

Purpose: Ready-to-serve dishes (external documentation) are delivered to customers (partners or clients).

Delivering great service requires the right tools - here are some essentials for managing external documentation:

• Workflows for Confluence: Ensure content is reviewed and approved before publishing.
• Scroll Viewport by K15t: Format and publish Confluence content externally.
• Page Feedback&Rating by Service Rocket: Allow external users to leave structured feedback.

Example: A troubleshooting guide for a software product is published with view-only access and a comments section for external customers.

2. Design: Enhancing Usability and Visual Appeal

What’s more attractive: a beautifully plated dish or a messy plate?

Similarly, the design of your Knowledge Hub should captivate and guide users effortlessly. To create an inviting and effective Knowledge Hub, these tools help you enhance both structure and style:

• Keep it functional and minimal. Use Workflows for Confluence to label drafts by their status and list approvers.
• Get creative and design engaging news overviews, visually-appealing layouts, and engaging content that keeps your team members inspired with Pulse by Caelor.
• Use a clean, branded layout with Scroll Viewport for public-facing pages.

Example: The Internal Knowledge Base features an Pulse Banner titled "Resources" with quick links to FAQs, policies, and team guidelines. A clean, intuitive design ensures a smooth user experience.

3. Engagement: Interaction and Contribution

A lively restaurant thrives on interaction - diners chatting, ordering, and providing feedback. Similarly, your Knowledge Hub should encourage users to engage and contribute.

Encourage participation and keep content fresh with these essential tools:

• Enable commenting and notifying contributors when document transitions through the approval workflow using Workflows for Confluence.
• Use AI-powered suggestions to guide employees to the most relevant articles before they escalate to support.
• Use the Recent updates macro to insert a clickable list of the most recently created or updated pages, blog posts, attachments, and comments

Example: A product FAQ transitioned to “In review” stage triggers a Slack notification to a customer success manager for review.

4. Analytics: Measuring Success

A restaurant’s success is measured by reviews and footfall; your Knowledge Hub’s success lies in user engagement and content performance. To measure and improve your Knowledge Hub’s impact, these tools provide valuable insights:

• Atlassian Analytics: Monitor traffic to both internal and external pages. Identify popular documents and areas needing attention.
• Viewtracker by Communardo: Comes with many powerful reports that allow you to analyze the usage of your Confluence documentation, knowledge base, intranet, extranet, and 3rd party app content.

Example: Analytics show that internal teams frequently access the Onboarding Guide, but external users rarely visit the Customer Portal FAQs. This insight helps focus improvement efforts.

5. Feedback: Continuous Improvement

Even the best chefs seek customer feedback. Similarly, a Knowledge Hub should evolve based on user input. Just like top chefs refine their recipes, these tools help you refine and enhance your content based on user input:

• Automate the process of incorporating feedback into the next content iteration via Workflows for Confluence.
• Embed Rovo Chat on customer-facing documentation pages to allow users to ask questions, report issues, or request additional information.
• Allow users to rate content directly on the page with Content Rating& Feedback for Confluence by MOEWE.

Example: A product manager edits the feature description. The document is automatically sent back to Drafts for a new round of approval via Workflows for Confluence.

Conclusion: Your Knowledge Hub, a Michelin-Star Experience

By treating your Knowledge Hub like a restaurant - with structured kitchens, inviting dining areas, and efficient delivery services - you can ensure it serves up the best experience for every user. With the right tools and best practices in place, your Knowledge Hub becomes a well-oiled machine, providing value internally and externally. Just like a Michelin-starred restaurant, your hub will leave a lasting impression on its ‘diners’.

Bon Appetite!

[Yulia Lenina _AppFox_]

If you’re interested in seeing how Workflows for Confluence operates, check out Atlassian expert Alex Ortiz’s review here

[Elena Zanchetta_Communardo]

Hi @Yulia Lenina _AppFox_ Great analogy — comparing a Knowledge Hub to a Michelin-star restaurant makes the concept so relatable and it's a great way to explain the structure and process behind a well-organized Knowledge Hub. It’s also nice to see Viewtracker and SubSpace Navigation mentioned here — understanding how content is used and how the navigation can be improved are definitely crucial of maintaining an effective hub. Thanks for including us in this helpful article! 

[Yulia Lenina _AppFox_]

Tagging for visibility: @Gabriella Evans _K15t_ @Elena Zanchetta_Communardo @Carolyn Allen @Marin Varvodic

[Yulia Lenina _AppFox_]

@Elena Zanchetta_Communardo thanks for the feedback! Your app is great for this purpose.

[Kristian Klima]

And this is how your Viewport site can look like :) 

[Yulia Lenina _AppFox_]

Tagging for visibility @Patricia Modispacher _appanvil_ 

[Gabriella Evans _K15t_]

Great analogy, @Yulia Lenina _AppFox_ ! We love to see Scroll Viewport included for the "delivery service" part – presentation matters just as much as the content! 🍽️😍

[Yulia Lenina _AppFox_]

@Gabriella Evans _K15t_ thanks, Gabriella - I enjoy using metaphors and analogies, as they help understand things much quicker and easier. Your app is great for presenting the information in the appealing and professional way.