Pros & Cons of categories vs Labels

[Mary Irion]

I wish to provide lists of articles on specific topics.  Is it better to use Categories or labels? We use the service desk where articles are provided in the response to the question.

Why even have the option for both category and labels?  (Seems a bit redundant to me)

Finally, how can I view all existing labels?  Is there a way to "bulk label" a group of articles or do I need to open each one?

[Kishan Sharma]

Hi @Mary Irion 

You can keep your knowledge base organized by categorizing (or grouping) articles together to help agents quickly find articles for customers, and customers to easily find articles in the help center. For example, in the IT service project, you can create categories like Computer and Devices and Software and Software Licenses to help organize your help topics.

These categories will also be added to your portal so your help seekers can easily access them. example below -

You can add labels to your confluence pages via REST API if you want to do it programatically, refer documentation here. You can also get the labels on all pages via REST API using the GET method, you will need to loop through all the spaces/pages to find that out.

[Mary Irion]

Thank you!   You are understanding what I am trying to accomplish. 

But how do I see a list of existing labels so I know what can be assigned to an article?  And how can see a list of all articles and what labels they have?  

Am I correct in that it is the article's label that the system uses to search for related articles for incoming service tickets?  Am I correct that the category the articles is in has no association to the service ticket system suggestions for related articles??

[Kishan Sharma]

Hit below URL by replacing your sitename, it should list all the labels in your confluence site.

https://<my-host-name>.atlassian.net/wiki/labels/listlabels-alphaview.action

The knowledge base suggests articles to customers and agents using keywords from request summaries. So, for the knowledge base to work properly, make sure your request types have a visible Summary field. Learn how to set up request type fields.

Labels are not used to suggest articles but to limit which articles are shown in each form.

And you are correct that the category the articles are in does not matter here since the knowledge base will pick up keywords from the Summary field that user input in the form.

[Alexander Bondarev]

Hi, @Mary Irion !

If I correctly understand your question: it is different objects, that work on different levels of you content. 

Categories help you to organize spaces.

Labels help you to organize pages.

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Out-of-box there is no bulk-update of pages(setting labels).