Knowledge Audit Checklist Template

What is a knowledge audit?

A knowledge audit is a systematic assessment of an organisation’s knowledge base — evaluating content quality, coverage completeness, ownership clarity, and governance compliance to identify gaps, measure health, and establish evidence-based improvement priorities across the entire content landscape.

Most knowledge bases grow organically. Teams create content when they need it, in whatever format feels convenient. After a year, the result is a mix of current and outdated articles, duplicate topics, orphaned documents with no owner, and entire subject areas with no coverage. A knowledge audit surfaces these problems methodically. Instead of guessing where the gaps are, you measure them — then prioritise fixes based on impact. Without regular audits, knowledge bases decay until users stop trusting the content.

Who should use this template?

This template is for teams responsible for knowledge base quality:

• Knowledge Managers — run periodic audits to measure content health and prioritise maintenance efforts
• Content Governance Leads — verify that articles meet quality standards, have assigned owners, and follow review schedules
• IT Directors — assess whether the knowledge base serves its intended users and identify areas needing investment
• Quality Assurance Teams — audit documentation against compliance requirements and organisational standards

What’s included in this template?

The template has two parts: structured metadata fields and the audit checklist body.

Metadata fields classify each audit:

• Audit title and reference number
• Knowledge base or space being audited
• Audit date and next scheduled audit
• Auditor — the person conducting the assessment
• Audit scope (full base, specific space, or topic area)

Audit checklist covers five areas:

• Content quality — accuracy, currency, readability, and adherence to style guidelines
• Coverage analysis — topics documented vs. topics needed, gaps by department or function
• Ownership and accountability — articles with no assigned owner, expired review dates, inactive contributors
• Findability — tagging consistency, search relevance, navigation structure
• Governance compliance — adherence to review cycles, approval workflows, and archival policies

How to create and customise this template in Elium

1. Open the Template Builder — Go to your profile menu and select the Template Builder tab, or click “+ Create” and choose “Create a new template”.
2. Set the scope — Choose an icon, enable the template, and decide whether it applies platform-wide or to specific spaces (e.g. your Knowledge Governance or Quality Management space).
3. Add structured fields — Click “Field” to add metadata: text fields for audit title and reference number, a tag field for the space being audited, date fields for audit date and next audit, a user field for auditor, and a tag field for audit scope. Mark audit title and auditor as mandatory.
4. Build the checklist structure — Use the “+” button to add content blocks: checkbox lists for each audit area (content quality, coverage, ownership, findability, governance), a table block for findings summary, and a text block for recommendations. Add placeholder prompts (e.g. “How many articles lack an assigned owner?”).
5. Preview and save — Review the template layout, then save. Knowledge managers can now conduct audits using a consistent format, and you can apply it to existing content in bulk.

How AI helps you create and use this template

Capture faster. Ask Elium’s AI to analyse your knowledge base and identify articles with no updates in the past 12 months, content with no assigned owner, or topics with duplicate coverage. It generates an audit summary that the knowledge manager reviews rather than checking articles individually.

Retrieve smarter. A governance lead asks Elium’s AI: “Which articles in the IT Support space have not been reviewed since January?” The AI returns the specific articles, their last review dates, and assigned owners — turning a manual search into an instant report.

Why teams use Elium for knowledge audits

A knowledge audit only delivers value when findings lead to action. If audit results live in a spreadsheet that gets filed and forgotten, nothing improves. Elium connects the audit to the content: findings link directly to the articles that need attention, and structured templates ensure every audit covers the same ground so progress is measurable over time.

VINCI Energies — 97,000 employees across 61 countries — manages 4,000+ articles in 110+ spaces with 500+ daily users. At that scale, content governance is critical. Structured templates and assigned ownership ensure articles stay current, and regular reviews prevent the knowledge base from becoming a repository of outdated documentation.