When would you use a How-to article vs a Troubleshooting article when setting up your knowledge base

[Susan Mangan]

I am creating an FAQ for tier 1 support.  I see there are 2 templates (or blueprints).  How-to article and Troubleshooting article.  When would you use one over the other? They both seem extremely similar.

[Sireesha Dugginapeddi [Appfire]]

Hi @Susan Mangan,

You are right! Both seem extremely similar.

Simply put, 'How-to' articles are more task oriented and 'Troubleshooting' articles provide solution to problems someone might encounter while installing, configuring or using any app. For example:

• How-to: How to add restrictions to an Atlassian User
• Troubleshooting: How to resolve 'xxx' script error for a Confluence add-on

How-to articles need not be task oriented all the time. They may also address some of the troubleshooting topics many a times, or customer issues or customer asks and so on. It absolutely depends on how you want to communicate to your user/customer or where your customer generally looks for additional help. We can conveniently say 'How-to' is a superset of 'Troubleshooting'.

Hope I didn't confuse you more! :) 

Thanks

Sireesha