Authors unable to Checkout/Edit Expired Knowledge Articles

[Ramonrdd3]

I'm investigating an issue in Knowledge Managemet, where authors are unable to checkout their knowledge articles that have expired, meaning the valid to date field value has expired.
An error message shows up when clicking the Checkout ui action saying: Valid to: Please select a date starting today or in the future. Of course as knowledge authors, they can't edit this field because the knowledge article needs to be checked out, and it can't be checked out because the valid to field must be updated, causing a deadlock.

I have verified that as an admin, and as Knowledge Admin the Valid to field is editable.
Though I don't think it should be admins or knowledge admin in charge of updating this field. I searched and read other articles about knowledge management, as well as the official documentation for this field, and it main purpose is to control the visibility of the article on the search bar of knowledge home page, as well as notify the author that the article is about to expire and needs to be reviewed.

I have checked UI policies, client scripts, the Checkout UI action for the table and couldn't found where this message is comming from. I also checked the script includes used in the UI action, as well as ACL for the tables and field, and dictionary overrides. No clue still.

Is this the OOB behavior for expired knowledge articles ?
I'm almost sure it's not but i would like to confirm that.

Also any other place i might have missed in the platform to check ?

Thanks

[Chaitanya ILCR · Accepted solution]

Hi @Ramonrdd3 ,

here is what I found 

you  can use the access analyzer to check which ACL is blocking the write access (yes OOB it's the ACL which is blocking the write access)

1. after some debugging I found articles with the workflow state as outdated are read only and users must click on the checkout ui action to be able to edit them (I have added the probable reason in the bottom)

2. and articles which have passed the valid to date and still in the published state you can set  minor edits property to true and give the users the ability to update the fields listed while being in the published state

property names (note: this only available when the article versioning plugin is enabled in your instance and looking at the screenshot of yours looks like it is)

glide.knowman.versioning.enable_minor_edits

glide.knowman.versioning.minor_edit_fields

and coming to your instance

it looks to me like it has been customized to abort the action when the valid to date is in the past ( this could have implemented by a BR or a onsubmit client script or with the UI action)

if you have not found the error message in any script

try checking the sys_ui_message for the error message in the message field and use the key and search in the scripts like business rules and script includes and 

Additional note: you can follow the ACL that is blocking and the scripts it referred to find out what I have shared

Please mark my answer as helpful/correct if it resolves your query.

Regards,
Chaitanya

[Ramonrdd3]

Hi @Chaitanya ILCR 
Thank you for all of this information, and also for reminding me about Access Analyzer. That will be very helpfull on the way. Following your advice I double checked the client scripts for the table. I found the onSubmitt client script where this message is comming from. It's a customization created a while back, that makes sure the valid to date entered is not a past date. 
The leason learned from this issue is, the check out ui action, creates a new knowledge article record, and as such, will trigger any onSubmitt client scripts for the table. A simple if condition will solve this issue. This definitively shouldn't be triggering for a publish knowledge article. In fact, it should only do it if it's on draft state i believe.