How to Create a New Bamboo Knowledge Base Solution Accelerator Site in Its own Site Collection

With the exciting launch of Knowledge Base Solution Accelerator R2.0 earlier this year, interest from the SharePoint Community has been phenomenal! This post will be part of what I hope will become a series of posts containing tips to make the most of your trial or purchase of Bamboo Knowledge Base Solution Accelerator (KB Accelerator). To make the series a success though, we will need YOUR help Hit up the comments and post any and all your questions about KB Accelerator - no question is too easy or too complex (though for overly complex questions, please be patient ).

So let's begin:

Tip Topic:

How to Create a New KB Accelerator Site for a Dedicated Site Collection?

Problem:

In SharePoint Central Administration, when I create a new Site Collection and it lists available Site Templates, the templates Bamboo KB Admin.R2 and Bamboo KB Client.R2 as described in the Online Documentation, are not listed, so now what do I do?

Cause:

The site templates Bamboo KB Admin.R2 and Bamboo KB Client.R2 are displayed based on a SharePoint mechanism called Site Collection Features. There is a separate Site Collection Feature for each site template, as shown below:

These features must be activated for the templates to appear. By default, when a new Site Collection is created, these features are not activated, thus the site templates are not listed.

Resolution:

1. When creating a new Site Collection, select < Select template later... > within the Custom tab and complete the rest of the Create Site Collection form:
   
2. After the Site Collection has been successfully created, open the link of the newly created Site Collection as a Site Collection Administrator.
3. In the top left-hand corner, select Site Settings from the Site Actions menu:
   
4. Locate the link Site collection features within the Site Collection Administration section:
   
5. Finally, locate the two site collection features, Bamboo KB Admin Site Template R2 and Bamboo KB Client Site Template R2, and click Activate for both features:
   
   **Side Note: While you are in the Site Collection Feature page, go ahead and activate the following Site Collection Features:
   1. Bamboo Data-Viewer Web Part
   2. Bamboo Group Redirect
   3. Bamboo KB Accelerator Reporting Web Part
   4. Bamboo Knowledge Base Accelerator
   5. Bamboo Navigator Web Parts
   6. Bamboo SharePoint Secure Trim Web Part
6. Next, simply open the new site collection URL again (or navigate up) and you will see the two site templates now listed in the Custom tab:
   
   It is recommended that you first create the Bamboo KB Client.R2 template at the top-level site of the site collection, thus providing a shorter URL to customers, and then create a sub-site that uses the Bamboo KB Admin.R2 site template.

At this point, continue following the instructions found in the Online Documentation to complete the configuration of KB Accelerator. You have now successfully created KB Accelerator sites within a dedicated Site Collection.