The Knowledge Editor enables you to create, customise and modify your own knowledge bases, building your strategic knowledge assets.

The Knowledge Viewer is used to consult the knowledge bases.

The Assistum Knowledge Editor allows you to create and edit knowledge bases. It is a visual editor and most actions are perfomed in a point and click manner.

A "node" is an issue that is relevant to the decision. Clicking on the cirlce on the toolbar adds a node to the knowledge base. Double clicking on a node brings up the node's properties.

A node's properties consists of a name and a question (and some information about the relevance of the issue). There is also a textbox for entering a document path or URL to provide more information to the user answering the question. This will appear when using the Viewer as a "More Info" button. Clicking on it will open the relevant document or application. It could be a webpage, Word document, videoclip or even another Assistum knowledge base that may give some more insights about this factor.

It also contains a set of possible answers to the question which the user selects when the question is asked. A default answer can be set and a slider can be used for answers that are between those entered.

Controls can be added to a node that are displayed with the question and can either be text or true/false. An example would be an Action control which would be true/false and would inicate that action needed to be taken. A report can then be produced indicating which factors/nodes require action to be taken.

The usual way of getting information is to question the user. But with the Business and Enterprise Editions you can consult another knowledge base through the source tab.

You can link nodes to show which factors impact what by clicking on the dependant node and dragging the dotted red line to the node that impacts it.

You can put weights on the links to reflect the importance of the relationships.

The position of the sliders on the scale should represent your judgement of what the answer should be in the absence of any other information for each of the three possibilities.

Generally, Assistum will balance the weight of evidence from the various nodes impacting a dependent node and come up with a balanced conclusion. However, it may be that one node, if definitely true, should override all other considerations. For example, legality or safety. To get the override effect, you click on the "always" box.

Right clicking on a node brings up a popup menu offering a number of different actions you can perform.

If you have Microsoft Word installed, you can spellcheck your knowledge base by right clicking the background and selecting Spell Check from the popup menu.

You can add your own graphic device (bitmap, gif etc.) so that it appears in the splash screen when the knowledge base is opened.

You can also add information about the knowledge base which will be displayed under Help, About when the knowledge base is opened in the Viewer.

You can also password protect the knowledge base either for users of the Viewer and/or users of the Editor.

You can choose the default colour of the background, the nodes and the links.

Assistum has an automated publishing capability that will publish and html page using a Java applet for the knowledge base that can be run over the Internet by anyone with a Java 1.1 enabled browser (most browsers).

The Knowledge Editor now has VBA programmability in all editions. Any VBA extensions written for a knowledge base will be saved with the knowledge base and will run in the Knowledge Viewer. This enables the integration of Assistum Knowledge Bases with other Windows applications.

User Manuals are available for download as pdf. They are for the Personal and Business Editions.