Using the ForgeRock Knowledge Base
Overview
This article covers the following topics:
- Finding articles
- Global searches
- Article types
- Article labels
- Product versions (Identity Platform)
- Article ratings and feedback
- Notifications
Finding articles
You can find articles in a number of different ways, combining approaches to refine your results and easily find relevant articles:
- Navigating articles by product/subject
- Searching (exact matches or keywords)
- Filtering results by category, product version and/or article type to refine the list of matching articles.
The knowledge base homepage allows you to navigate articles by product, security advisories or support topics. Click the one you are interested in to display relevant articles. Each page has a navigation bar at the top, which provides links to collections of articles and books. You can easily navigate to these collections by clicking the relevant link:
There is a search field at the top of each page within the knowledge base, which allows you to search all articles. You can search by entering one or more keywords in the Search field and clicking Search (or pressing RETURN). The search is case-insensitive. You can search for exact matches by enclosing your search terms in " ", for example, search on "URLDecoder: Illegal hex characters in escape (%) pattern" to find all articles related to this error:
Alternatively, you can search by the KB ID; each article has an 8-digit unique KB identifier prefixed with a and you can search for a specific article by entering this ID if known. For example, searching for a41793700 will return the How do I collect all the data required for troubleshooting AM and Agents (All versions)? article. Similarly, books have an 8-digit unique KB identifier prefixed with b.
Once the search results are displayed on the Browse page, you can filter the results using Article Type and Categories. Articles are categorized by product, with sub-categories relevant to the product selected (including product versions for the Identity Platform). Each category shows the number of related articles. Parent categories show the combined total for the parent category and all sub-categories by default. You can choose to only show articles related to the parent category by deselecting the Include articles from subcategories option. The number will update to show the total for the parent categories only.
The Article Types and Categories filters work together. For example, you can enter search criteria (rest api), select an Article Type (Solutions) and select a product version from Categories (ForgeRock Identity Platform > Access Management > AM 7.x) to only display Solution type articles for REST issues in Access Management 7.x:
You can select one or more categories to only show articles related to your selection. If you select two or more categories, only articles related to all selected categories are shown, which may produce no results. You can deselect individual categories by clicking on them again.
Note
At the bottom of each article, the categories related to that article are shown. You can click any of these categories to show all articles corresponding to that category as an easy way of finding other articles that may be of interest.
Global searches
In addition to quick searches and searching by categories and collections, there are Global search options available if you prefer to search across Backstage or multiple KB libraries:
-
Global Search - searches everything on Backstage by default. You can refine the results returned by deselecting one or more of the following types and clicking Search:
- articles (from all Knowledge libraries)
- books (from all Knowledge libraries)
- docs
- issues (all JIRA issues)
- downloads
- Knowledge Base search - searches within all Knowledge Base libraries. You can refine your search by selecting a specific library first.
Article types
The following article types are included in the Knowledge Base:
| Article type | Description |
|---|---|
| Solutions |
These articles describe a problem and provide one or more solutions for you to resolve it. Each Solutions article has the following standard sections to easily guide you through the process of matching the issue through to the resolution:
|
| How To | These articles provide a set of step-by-step instructions that walk you through how to configure specific features and functionality. |
| FAQ | These articles provide a collection of frequently asked questions and answers that relate to the same topic. |
| Best Practice | These articles provide ForgeRock recommended best practice techniques and configurations with proven reliability for achieving desired results. |
| Security Advisory | These articles detail security vulnerabilities that have been discovered and fixed in patches for ForgeRock products |
| Product Q&As | These articles provide answers to questions about our products. |
| Support | These articles provide information on ForgeRock support and Backstage. There are some product type informational articles such as EOSL dates. |
Links to related documents, training and issue tracker IDs are also given to assist you further.
Caution
All links to product documentation take you to the most recent released versions unless an article is specific to an older version; if you are not using the latest version of the product, you should exercise caution and refer to the product documentation relevant to the version you are using. You can use the links at the bottom of the product documents to navigate to different versions of the section or chapter you are reading.
Article labels
Articles have labels in the top-right hand corner to quickly indicate if they apply to the Identity Cloud, Identity Platform, both or they are archived.
Identity Cloud articles
Identity Platform articles
Articles for both Identity Cloud and Identity Platform
Archived articles
Product versions (Identity Platform)
All KB articles relevant to products in the Identity Platform specify which version(s) they apply to as follows:
- (All versions) in the title signifies all supported versions of that product. You should check ForgeRock End of Service Life (EOSL) Policy and EOSL Dates | AM, DS and IDM to verify your product version is still supported.
- Products in the ForgeRock Identity Platform are referred to using an abbreviation, for example, AM, DS, IDM and IG. Therefore, an article applying to AM (All versions) means it applies to AM 6.x and AM 7.x.
Articles that solely apply to fully EOSL products, for example, AM 5 or IDM 5 are archived (they will not be updated) but remain in the KB for reference. They include an Archive statement at the top signifying this: This article has been archived and is no longer maintained by ForgeRock.
Finally, if you want to double-check what versions an article applies to, you can check the product version Categories associated with the article. These are shown at the bottom of the article, for example:
Article ratings and feedback
Articles that have been rated show how many readers recommend it at the top of the article.
You can rate an article to indicate its helpfulness by clicking the thumbs up or thumbs down button in the Was this article helpful? section (end of the article). You can rate each revision of an article only once. If you feel an article was not helpful or want to give any feedback on it, please use the Send feedback link to give us the opportunity to improve it.
Notifications
You can subscribe to email notifications for different collections of articles and/or books. Each collection that permits notifications has a Subscribe button, for example:
Click the Subscribe button to be notified via email when relevant articles or books are published.
You can unsubscribe at any time by re-clicking this button (the label changes to Unsubscribe) or using the unsubscribe link in the email.