Create a New Glossary Item

There are two ways to create a new glossary item:

Via the "Create a Glossary Item" Link (Recommended)

1. Under the Documents tab of the KB Admin Tools, select the Create a Glossary Item link in the left-hand navigation.

   

2. This will lead to the Creating a New Glossary Item screen, shown below. This screen will differ from the standard document creation screen in a number of ways:

   • The Template dropdown will be absent
   • The Title field will be relabeled as Term
   • The SearchPriority field will default to Low
   • The PageHeader, PageFooter, and Summary fields will be absent
   • The Type dropdown will be set to Glossary

   

   The Term, Keywords, and Body fields are required. Otherwise, the process to save and publish your glossary item is the same as for a document (described further in KB Author Training - Creating a New Document).

Via the "Create a Doc" Link or Editing an Existing Doc

You can also create a glossary item using the Create a Doc link in the left-hand navigation of the Documents tab. In this case, you will need to complete all four required fields: Title, Keywords, Summary and Body. Then, you may manually change the Type dropdown to Glossary. Once saved, the document will be converted to a glossary item.

This method is generally not recommended because you will be required to fill in the "Summary" field at first. Once the document is saved as a glossary item, the summary will not appear in the published glossary item, though it will continue to be displayed in the KB Admin Tools.

Searching for Glossary Items

Under the Documents tab, when Glossary Items are listed with other types of documents, the Title column will contain the name of the Glossary Item followed by "[Glossary]" to help distinguish these items from normal KB documents.

To see only your glossary items, click on the Show advanced options, then set the Type dropdown to Glossary. You will then see a special view of your glossary terms, their definitions, and options to activate and/or deactivate all on one screen.

Live Site Appearance

Regular KB search results include Glossary items which are set to the status of Active. Glossary items will appear in the search results alongside documents, though they will be labeled with a "[Glossary item]" tag. The image below shows a search on a live site for the term "SharePoint". The search yields 6 results. Items 3 and 6 are circled in red are Glossary items found among the documents yielded from the search.

Clicking on a glossary item in the search table will display the glossary item, along with a special search area that allows the user to specifically search for other glossary items.

The image below displays the "SharePoint" glossary item being viewed in the live Site. The term and definition is displayed in the main content area. Directly above this is the "Glossary search" area. In this section, you'll find a glossary-specific search bar, a Topics dropdown, and alphabetical links to find all glossary items beginning with a given letter.

Viewing Your Site's Glossary Page

The Glossary search page and index can be accessed directly via the glossary.php page for your site (e.g. kb.wisc.edu/yourgroupsite/glossary.php). The image below shows the Help Desk live site. The url used to access it is circled in red.

If you have a large glossary, you may also wish to link to it from your site's homepage. To do this, follow the instructions for creating a Side Module Link in KB User's Guide - Settings Tab - Menus, which the link URL is "glossary.php".

Creating a Tooltip for Abbreviations

Using the KB's Include doc feature on a glossary item will produce a different result than using it with a standard document. Instead of embedding the body of the glossary item on the page, the glossary "term" will appear in the document with a dashed underline. Hovering over it will reveal the "definition" in a tooltip. The cursor will appear as question mark icon upon mouse-over.   

Please note that this method should only be used for abbreviations and initialisms. This is because this feature creates an <abbr> element in your document, with is an element that is specifically intended for abbreviations. When a screen reader encounters this element, it may automatically read out the text in the tooltip. Using this with a full definition of a term may be confusing for a screen reader user, as the definition will be read out in the middle of the sentence where you have inserted it.

For all other terms and definitions, it is recommended that you use the Link doc feature to link to the glossary item for users that are not familiar with the term.

How to Place a Glossary Tool Tip in Your Document

1. Find the ID number of the glossary item you wish to embed in your document.

2. Edit the KB document you would like to embed your glossary item in and place your cursor where you wish to display it.

3. Select the Include doc button from the toolbar. Enter the ID number of your glossary item in the Document ID number field, open the Style dropdown and select Inline SPAN, then click Insert.

4. The editor will display the standard Include doc text, but you can see the desired effect by opening the Preview window.