Oracle Service Cloud has circa 500 configuration settings, which control the platform’s functions. Some of them are commonly used but many are not that well known. Below are a few that you might want to be aware of.
AR_AUTO_ENABLE
This configuration setting is useful for knowledge managers or administrators to better manage the knowledge base, and ensure the answers are always up-to-date and helpful for customers.
It enables a feature that automatically changes the status of an answer to “Review”, when data aging reduces the answer’s solved count to zero. The default value is disabled (No) but you might want to turn it on (Yes).
ANS_NEW_INC_DURATION
Speaking about answers aging, this configuration setting specifies the number of days that the Solved Count of new answers will not be aged (meaning reduced).
You might new answers not to be impacted by aging, in the first few days or weeks, and ensure they keep up there for people to easily bump onto them.
If this value is set to zero (0) no answers will be considered new. The default value is 30. And the maximum is 9999999999 (basically, forever).
ANS_UPD_INC_DURATION
Similarly, this configuration setting specifies the number of days that the Solved Count of updated answers will not be aged.
If this value is set to zero (0) no answers will be considered new. The default value is 30. And the maximum is 9999999999 (basically, forever).
Please notice that this is for updated answers, whilst the above setting is for new answers.
ANS_PRV_ENABLED
If you would like to implement a specific answer access level, and have a subset of answers only to be seen/displayed to users with a specific access level, then you must enable this configuration setting.
It enables the “Privileged Access” feature which allows customers to access privileged access levels of answers. These access levels are in addition to those that are visible by default on the interface (Help, Everyone).
Privileged access levels are assigned to SLAs. An SLA must be applied to a Contact or Organisation and the individual must be logged in to the customer portal, in order to view the answer.
The default value is disabled (No), and you must enable it to allow privileged access (Yes).
ANS_SRCH_THRESHOLD
When a customer searches for an answer on the Oracle Service Cloud knowledge base, the system will weigh the answers, based on the search (keywords, etc.). This configuration setting specifies a threshold for returning answers.
Only answers that match at or above this threshold will be returned. The minimum and default value is zero (0) and the maximum is 2147483647, even though acceptable values are between zero (0) and 100.
If the configuration setting ANS_SRCH_SUB_THRESHOLD is enabled an exception is made when all matching answers are below the threshold.
ANS_SRCH_SUB_THRESHOLD
As mentioned above, this configuration setting is linked to ANS_SRCH_THRESHOLD and it specifies whether there should be an exception to limiting answer results with a threshold on matching.
If enabled, when no answers match at or above the threshold set, the answers that matched less well are still returned, avoiding a zero result set. If disabled, no answers matching below threshold are ever returned. By default this configuration setting is disabled (No).
Doctor CX 
Great piece of information.
I’m always amazed by the robust configuration settings available. Thanks for sharing!
All good stuffs
You did a better job explaining these than the documentation does Luis!
Great explanation!
ANS_PRV_ENABLED is cool, which eases visibility control of KB.
Hi Luis,
Always found the site helpful – I’d definitely like to see more about analysis and tweaking of KB articles and getting the most out of the self service element of our CP, cos that’s where we’re falling down. We got incident creation / contact down by 15-20% but hit a wall and that’s my new area of concentration at present
Hi Howard, thank you for the kind words. And you pose an interesting challenge. Some people (or most) struggle to get that much deflection by deploying web self-service. You did it and want to go for more. Well done!
It’s good to see the max value for the ANS_SRCH_THRESHOLD. I had no idea!
Thanks for sharing!
Thanks for sharing, currently implementing KCS at our organization, this sure comes in handy to diggest
Config settings are like many tiny needles in a haystack of needles. Anything that attempts to help explain them is very helpful for newbies. It took me quite some time to figure it all out and there are still occasions when I will call up one of my consultants and say wasn’t there a setting to do X?
Thanks! Always good to understand and review the out of the box settings
Thank you so much for the great information, very well done!
Thanks for sharing, good to have a place to find such information.
Thanks for the Tips, I will have to review our settings to see what I can tweak for the better
Thanks for sharing Luis. Do you know if these Config settings also affect Knowledge Advanced or are there equivalent OKSC config settings?
These do not apply to KA
Thanks for the tips.
Thanks for the tips. We constantly tweak our KB to keep the right answers coming up as a result for our users. With 26 different SLAs assigned to answers, it gets challenging. I forwarded your article to my knowledge managers for them to look at and see if there is a way to use these configurations to improve our search results.
Thank you for this valuable tips 🙂
Very Helpful.
Thanks for posting this! Very useful.
thanks for the tips
Very Helpful, thanks so much
Never knew about some of these, thanks Dr CX!!
Nice article!
Always great to share these and I learn something every time! Thanks Luis.
Thanks for sharing!
Thanks for sharing this information, Luis.
Found a few great tips and things for my team to take a look at – thanks !
ANS_PRV_ENABLED is great, it saves us from having to create our own workarounds for more accesses levels that we had to do previously
when you use AR_AUTO_ENABLE you should check if Review status is set to public or private, that will determine if it is still displayed on the portal. Thanks for the tips
Thanks for the tips!
Still relevant and helpful after 2 years. Thanks.
Thank you Anuj, glad these blogs can help