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Admin_FTNT
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Staff

Which Forums Posts would you recommend for the Fortinet Knowledge Base?

The Fortinet Discussion Forums hold a wealth of information that has been helpful to users of Fortinet products.  We would be interested to know which of the posts, both old and new, you feel should be added into the Fortinet Knowledge Base.

 

Regards,

Admin.

1 Solution
GrahamK998
New Contributor

Well, as is occurring within this thread the first step is to clearly define the difference between a general forum post, a sticky post (FAQ list?) and a Knowledge Base article. A KB should be the initial go to resource for any technical query or problem (that the user has not been able to find in standard vendor documentation); obviously I'm excluding the cases where there is a high impact live service issue at hand i.e. outage, and are covered by a support contract, since the TAC will be called.  Ideally the KB should follow a, Goal (outcome), Facts (e.g. HW/SW variant, error messages) & Symptoms (e.g. unable to set config, poor performance), structure so that the user can be presented with the most relevant results, subject to a coherent search string being submitted.  KB articles are generally objective i.e. there is a clear and (predominantly) singular answer/method. If he answer is not found via the KB then this is where the forum comes into play, since there is a wider freedom of expression in the way a question may be asked, and it is being read and answered by humans, who can seek further clarification of the question.  Forums are ideal where answers can be subjective since the resources i.e. other forum members are numerous, and all replies are subject to public peer review. Moving back to the original question... Any technical post that; receives a significant amount of views, AND has a singular unchallenged answer OR one that can be categorised as being 'best practice', should be a candidate for inclusion into the KB. IMO if a KB library has been established then a forum 'sticky post' (if used) should be constrained to information relating to forum administration and general assistance OR technical posts in a sub forum and are highly informative i.e. announcement of a SW release or product alerts.  Sticky posts do add to the administrative burden of forums admin's; additionally if not used sparingly you can end up with 10's per sub forum, can be unsightly.  Sticky posts should not be there to cater for any flood of posts that would be categorised under the banner of "RTFM".

 

Rgs,

Graham

View solution in original post

8 REPLIES 8
rwpatterson
Valued Contributor III

Would this be akin to a 'sticky' post that remains near the top of a forum?

 

Also, if a post is edited, would the KB entry be synchronized?

 

Thank you

Bob - self proclaimed posting junkie!
See my Fortigate related scripts at: http://fortigate.camerabob.com

Bob - self proclaimed posting junkie!See my Fortigate related scripts at: http://fortigate.camerabob.com
Admin_FTNT

Bob,

 

As a first step we are simply looking for those nuggets of information that would be of interest to a wider audience, and which haven't already been included in our Technical Documentation or Knowledge Base.

 

We would look primarily for items that are complete in their own right and thus would not need to be kept in synch with an on-going debate on the forums.

 

Regards,

Admin

rwpatterson
Valued Contributor III

I was referring more to the likes of the post I authored on July 17, 2012: FGT firmware version list with dates (https://forum.fortinet.com/tm.aspx?m=86591). Just after it's third anniversary, it's topped 5600 views. With over 1800 views per year (over 150 per month!), I would think it's kind of a well used resource. The only thing is with each new firmware release, it's now a dated piece of information. No debates, or comments are being added. That was why I had asked.

 

Bob

Bob - self proclaimed posting junkie!
See my Fortigate related scripts at: http://fortigate.camerabob.com

Bob - self proclaimed posting junkie!See my Fortigate related scripts at: http://fortigate.camerabob.com
Dave_Hall
Honored Contributor

Andrea Soliva's post from last year on wireless stuff (posted in response to not able to connect to some Apple related products; think setting the MTU value on the tunnel fixed the problem in that matter).

 

 

NSE4/FMG-VM64/FortiAnalyzer-VM/6.0 (FWF30E/FW92D/FGT200D/FGT101E/FGT81E)/ FAP220B/221C

NSE4/FMG-VM64/FortiAnalyzer-VM/6.0 (FWF30E/FW92D/FGT200D/FGT101E/FGT81E)/ FAP220B/221C
ede_pfau
Esteemed Contributor III

I definitivly support sticky posts. Bob's list of firmwares, the list of hardware features, and some more.


Ede

"Kernel panic: Aiee, killing interrupt handler!"
Ede"Kernel panic: Aiee, killing interrupt handler!"
emnoc
Esteemed Contributor III

IMHO; Any posts that occurs for the same topic should be added to the KB. Somebody could easy search the top FAQ and post that as a KB if one does not exist.

 

 

PCNSE 

NSE 

StrongSwan  

PCNSE NSE StrongSwan
GrahamK998
New Contributor

Well, as is occurring within this thread the first step is to clearly define the difference between a general forum post, a sticky post (FAQ list?) and a Knowledge Base article. A KB should be the initial go to resource for any technical query or problem (that the user has not been able to find in standard vendor documentation); obviously I'm excluding the cases where there is a high impact live service issue at hand i.e. outage, and are covered by a support contract, since the TAC will be called.  Ideally the KB should follow a, Goal (outcome), Facts (e.g. HW/SW variant, error messages) & Symptoms (e.g. unable to set config, poor performance), structure so that the user can be presented with the most relevant results, subject to a coherent search string being submitted.  KB articles are generally objective i.e. there is a clear and (predominantly) singular answer/method. If he answer is not found via the KB then this is where the forum comes into play, since there is a wider freedom of expression in the way a question may be asked, and it is being read and answered by humans, who can seek further clarification of the question.  Forums are ideal where answers can be subjective since the resources i.e. other forum members are numerous, and all replies are subject to public peer review. Moving back to the original question... Any technical post that; receives a significant amount of views, AND has a singular unchallenged answer OR one that can be categorised as being 'best practice', should be a candidate for inclusion into the KB. IMO if a KB library has been established then a forum 'sticky post' (if used) should be constrained to information relating to forum administration and general assistance OR technical posts in a sub forum and are highly informative i.e. announcement of a SW release or product alerts.  Sticky posts do add to the administrative burden of forums admin's; additionally if not used sparingly you can end up with 10's per sub forum, can be unsightly.  Sticky posts should not be there to cater for any flood of posts that would be categorised under the banner of "RTFM".

 

Rgs,

Graham

The_Gamer
New Contributor

You are right that The Fortinet Discussion Forums hold a wealth of information. But every person has his own requirements or interest to read. So we can't say that what we are searching for, others are also searching the same. It's true that Fortinet Knowledge Base forums that is helping us all to learn more and more

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fastpeoplesearch is web base search engine where we can search for our family members easily. There is no other website like fast people search
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