VMware’s Knowledge Base site is a powerful search engine for finding information, but the way you choose to use it is important. A general search is one thing, but what if you could keep track of changes to knowledge base articles and get notified when new ones are created based on a specific product area of interest? That’s exactly where we are headed with this article. We’ll use KB in place of knowledge base for the remainder of this article.
Enter the KB Site
Start by visiting the VMware KB site. We could do a search right from the start, but let’s click the option to Login. That is the ultimate way to personalize your experience using the site and get the most out of it.
After clicking the Login option, you will immediately be taken to a screen like the one below. Login with your Customer Connect e-mail address and password. This is the same e-mail address and password that is used to submit VMware support requests. Just in case Customer Connect doesn’t ring a bell in your mind, it used to be called MyVMware and was re-branded. Once you have entered the proper credentials, click the “SIGN IN” button.
Now that I’ve logged into the KB site, my initials are displayed in the upper right-hand corner. Click on My Subscriptions to continue. If you prefer, the direct link to get to your subscriptions after logging into the KB site is https://kb.vmware.com/s/my-subscriptions. If you hit that link directly without having logged in first you will be prompted to login with your Customer Connect credentials.
Personalizing My Subscriptions
Here’s what the My Subscriptions area looks like for me at present. You can see below I am subscribed to 5 specific articles. That means I will get an e-mail when the content of any one of those articles is updated. Once logged into the KB site, it’s easy to subscribe to any specific article. But suppose I want to keep an eye on an entire product’s KB articles. To do that, click the plus sign next to “Products and KB Categories.” I don’t have any product-specific subscriptions setup at the moment, so let’s do it together.
After clicking the add button, the screen below pops up. Since we want to add a specific product, click your mouse in the box that says “Add a Product.”
Upon clicking here, you will see a dropdown list of products. Start typing the name of the product(s) on which you want to focus. We can start typing Workspace ONE, for example, and select it from the list (click on it). You’ll notice there are 4959 KB articles in existence for this product at the time of this blog’s writing (might be greater than that for you).
At this point, I’m subscribing to every Workspace ONE article that exists. I will be notified of any new KBs released for Workspace ONE as well as any updates to existing KBs about it.
What if we want to narrow the scope further and only subscribe to certain types of KBs? Click in the area marked “Add one or more KB categories.” There are many different categories from which to choose here. Click on the ones of interest to you to narrow the subscription scope.
Suppose we only care about subscribing to Known Issues, Patches, Security, Proactive Advisories, and Alerts. Only those categories are highlighted as shown below.
If you’re looking for KB articles in a specific language, click in the language box to select any others which are applicable. I’m choosing not to add any additional languages other than English at this time.
As it now stands, we are about to subscribe to all Workspace ONE articles in the 5 categories below written in English. Just to confirm I didn’t change anything, here’s what our screen looks like to this point.
Suppose we also want to subscribe to all Workspace ONE Access articles in addition to the Workspace ONE Articles. In order to do that click the ADD NEW PRODUCT option, and follow the steps above, selecting Workspace ONE Access as your product (steps not shown). You’ll notice below I did not select specific categories. Now that we have the subscriptions in place, click ADD to make the change.
Here’s a view of the My Subscriptions area to this point. We can see that I’m subscribed to all Workspace ONE articles in 5 specific categories and all articles related to Workspace ONE Access.
Send Me the Digest
Let’s go one step further. You’ll notice above there is an option to get a daily digest. This details any new KBs created as well as any KBs updated which fit in my subscription parameters. So if there were multiple changes made in a day, we should have them all in the digest. Go ahead and click the radio button to turn on this functionality.
A Small Caveat
The steps above are unique to my Customer Connect account. I will be the only one with subscriptions setup based on the parameters specified earlier in this article, and the digest e-mail gets sent only to me. Any other member of my team wishing for similar subscriptions would need to perform the steps using their Customer Connect account. That person may have very different subscription preferences and can tailor them to specific, personalized needs.
Anatomy of a KB Article
Once logged into the KB site with your Customer Connect account, it is easy to subscribe to an individual KB article. The article shown below is not one I am personally subscribed to, so I could easily click the subscribe button to get notified upon any changes to this knowledge base article. Notice in the bottom right corner the related product(s) for this KB article is VMware Workspace ONE. The category of the article is Known Issue (something we can filter by when we create a product-specific subscription as detailed ealier).
When you look at a KB article, remember to take the opportunity to give feedback on whether it was helpful using the yes / no options shown above. Providing more details helps our technical writers make things better for customers and partners. And, your comments (visible after you click yes / no) get sent back to the author of the specific article.
Example Notification
What do the notifications look like when a change is made to a KB article? I mentioned above I am subscribed to a few specific KBs. A few months ago I received an e-mail about an update to the contents of the WS1 Location (GPS) Tracking Overview article. At the time I was not subscribed to a daily digest and received only this notification. Since we showed how to subscribe to entire products and categories, I highly recommend the daily digest shown earlier in this article.
