Knowledge as Code: Leveraging your Knowledge

Written by: James Brown
2 min read

In Part II of the Knowledge as Code journey I discussed how we pushed our content creation into Github. In this finale we will talk about how we're using it to Continuously Deliver our knowledge.

At CloudBees we vehemently refuse to dogfood rather (perhaps more presumptuously) like to drink our own champagne ;-) Enter CloudBees Jenkins Platform and Workflow . <Insert shameless plug for a recent Workflow Reference at DZone .>

So what can you do with knowledge in an SCM? We're only scratching at the surface with how we apply our Knowledge today including driving our knowledge base and correlating known issues with artifacts provided by our customers.

At a high level the Continuous Delivery of our knowledge is accomplished through a Jenkins Workflow job that polls Github for changes on a minute by minute basis. One of the more typical use case for Jenkins. The Workflow job itself is what really gives us the ability to automate more complex things such as validating formatting based on taxonomy definitions as well as the type of change (add/delete/delta) being performed. It also provides the ability to manually gate content deployment based on your KCS or perhaps Brand requirements. Workflow literally makes it possible for someone non-technical to accept a change and deploy it with a click (or email, or alternative input).

As a last stage in the workflow you might notify your customer success team about subject matter or critical issues for them to proactively engage their customer portfolio.

To recap here's a high level architecture;

Let your imagination run wild and you might see opportunities for integrating your knowledge to be available real-time within your product or automating remote health-check analysis. The architecture itself can be applied for any number of means to manage your static content whether that's for your website or production documentation.

Once you start looking at your knowledge as more than something you expect Google to index or your customers to peruse you'll find you have more value to offer than you may have realized.

James Brown
Director of Global Customer Engagement
CloudBees

Stay up to date

We'll never share your email address and you can opt out at any time, we promise.