Capture knowledge from experts

Experts often have little time to write. This guide shows how to get their knowledge into Elium with little effort from them.

Decide what to capture first

Do not ask an expert to "document everything". Choose a few subjects:

• What people ask for. The article requests and the searches without results show what is missing.

• What the expert explains many times. Each repeated question is an article to write once.

• What only one person knows. If that person is away, the work stops. Start there.

Give each kind of knowledge a template

A template tells the expert what to write, section by section. It also makes all the articles of one kind look the same, so readers find the information in the same place.

Keep the templates short. Make a field mandatory only when the article is useless without it: each mandatory field is one more reason not to write.

Choose the way that fits the expert

The expert writes

This works for experts who like to write. Give them the template and one example of a good article. The Smart Editor helps them improve or correct their text.

Start from a file

The knowledge often exists already, in a PDF or in a document that you can export as a PDF. Import the file: Elium turns a PDF or Markdown file into a draft article. The expert corrects the draft, which takes less time than writing.

To move a whole folder from Google Drive or OneDrive, a platform administrator uses the bulk imports.

Interview the expert

A colleague asks the questions and writes the answers:

1. Prepare five to 10 questions, starting from the template.

2. Talk with the expert and take notes, or record the conversation.

3. Write the draft and save it in the space, not in "Personal Content". A draft in a space is visible to the other contributors of the space.

4. Invite the expert to contribute so that they correct the draft. The expert must be a contributor in the space.

Let an AI assistant write the draft

An AI assistant connected to Elium through MCP (Model Context Protocol), such as ChatGPT or Claude, can create the draft. The expert gives it their notes or the transcript of a meeting. The assistant chooses the template, fills its fields and adds the tags. The article is saved as a draft, and the expert reviews it in Elium.

Send it by email

An answer that an expert wrote in an email is knowledge too. Each person has a personal Elium address: an email sent to it becomes a draft in their "Personal Content". For a team, a platform administrator can create an email pipeline that puts the emails in a space.

Write for readers and for AI

The same rules help a person who reads quickly and an AI agent that looks for an answer:

• One subject for each article. Split a long document into several articles and link them.

• A title in the reader's words. Use the words that people type in the search bar.

• A summary at the top. Elium can write it for you, and you correct it.

• Complete sentences. Name the page and the button. "Click here" means nothing to a reader who does not see your screen.

While you write, Elium warns you when similar content exists. Open the other article before you continue: it may be better to update it.

Have the draft checked

Before the article is published, the expert confirms that it is correct. If someone else wrote the draft, use an approval on request with the expert as the approver. They leave their corrections as annotations.

Finish the article

An article is finished when people can find it and trust it:

1. Add the tags that readers filter on.

2. Check the owner. If someone else wrote the draft, ask a space coordinator to change the owner to the expert.

3. Set a verification date if people act on the article.

4. If the article answers a request, link it in the request and set the status to "Done".

Next step

• When an expert is about to leave, read Keep knowledge when someone leaves.

• For the methods behind this guide, read What is knowledge transfer?