Using the Sama Knowledge Base
Updated at April 16th, 2024
The SamaKnow platform exists to provide accessible knowledge across the entire Sama organization. Because of this, information in the knowledge base is organized into distinct categories, sub-categories, and articles. Finding your way through everything that's presented can be intimidating, but by following this guide, you'll be equipped with every tool you need to extract the most knowledge from these pages.
Key features of SamaKnow
Accessing articles
No matter how you access SamaKnow, you'll be brought to the Landing Page:
From the Landing Page, clicking on any of the visible categories will show you any sub-categories or articles related to that top-level description. For example, clicking on “Integrations” will show you the Developer integrations
sub-category, the Security integrations
subcategory, and the Data security and cloud storage integrations
article, all on the same page.
Reading articles
When you're in an article, you'll often see highlighted blocks of text. These sections are known as “callouts” and come in four distinct varieties:
📘 Note
A blue callout is a “Note”. This is advice or information you should keep in mind as you read the article or the section, but generally won't impair your ability to use or understand the feature.
⚠ Warning
A yellow callout is a “Warning”. This is advice or details about the feature or page that should be considered before proceeding, as skipping these sections could negatively impact your ability to use or understand this feature.
👍 Success
A green callout is a “Success” callout. This generally contains information relevant to a new feature release or about a specific task after it's been completed through a tutorial.
🛑 Stop
Red callouts mean “Stop what you're doing”. If a red callout is present, it's imperative that you read and understand its contents before proceeding through the article or section.
Sharing articles
There's no trick to sharing articles, either: simply send along the entire article URL, and that can be used to view the specific information. You can even share a direct link to a specific section by clicking on it from the table of contents, then sending that URL.
For example:
https://docs.sama.com/en_US/integrations/choosing-an-asset-sourcing-and-hosting-option#google-cloud-storage-4
Navigating and finding articles
Navigating through SamaKnow can occur in one of 3 areas:
- The left-hand categories panel, allowing quick navigation between the different sections and subsections of the knowledge base
- The center section, which will contain either the subcategories and articles based on the currently selected category, or the selected article.
- The final section only appears when you're reading an article, and contains the table of contents of the specific article. This table lists all the headers contained within the article, and clicking on one will take you directly to that section, and append a direct link in the URL.
You can also use the search bar at the top of the page to enter relevant terms and receive a list of potentially applicable articles. These results can be opened in a new tab for immediate or later review.
You can even phrase your search as a question if it helps! The results will appear all the same, and dynamically update as you flesh out your question based on the key terms in your search.
Submitting feedback
Receiving your feedback is an important part of improving SamaKnow. To that end, here are the ways that you can directly provide feedback on the articles you read:
-
Highlight a specific section of text, which can be used to provide feedback to that specific section. This is a two-step feedback process, with information from both steps being provided to the writing team.
-
The first step is selecting all relevant text, then selecting the “Add Feedback for this selection” button that appears once text is highlighted.
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The second step involves providing specific feedback for the highlighted section. You need to select a general category for why you're providing feedback, then, optionally, provide additional details.
-
The first step is selecting all relevant text, then selecting the “Add Feedback for this selection” button that appears once text is highlighted.
-
Providing feedback on an entire article, which is further divided into two distinct actions:
- Giving the article a general “Thumbs up” or “Thumbs down”. This provides the writing team with a general sentiment for the article, but does not provide any concrete feedback data. Using only the “Thumbs down” is not recommended if action or correction is required.
-
Clicking on
Give feedback about this article
will open a new pop-up that allows you to provide specific information about the article as a whole. You need to select a general category for why you're providing feedback, then, optionally, provide additional details.
What makes good feedback?
When submitting feedback for SamaKnow, good feedback will get changes made faster than lackluster or generic feedback. As you select a category and provide additional comments for context, answer these questions to ensure constructive feedback is being submitted:
-
Why does the information or article need to be updated?
- This is largely answered by the category you select, but additional context in the comments is always helpful.
- What is the correct information?
-
How impactful is this inaccuracy?
- This information helps determine the priority of the correction.
Ideally, all of these questions can be answered completely, but even with partial answers, the feedback loop starts on solid ground.