Articles After Deleting KB

[mickydash2001]

Hi All,

If we delete a knowledge base, what will happen to the knowledge articles within it? will it be still accessible to knowledge_admin's?

[Nayan Dhamane · Accepted solution]

Hello @mickydash2001 ,

After deleting the knowledge base the articles will be orphaned and not be deleted.

This orphans the articles that were attached to it. Knowledge base is a required field on articles and this will decouple them and leave the KB article undefined for KB Base.

Be aware the articles do not get re-attached to anything and some cleanup will need to be done if you need the articles to be deleted.   Ideally, you would attach them to another KB, perhaps specifically for review and cleanup.  

[mickydash2001]

Hi @Nayan Dhamane 
Thanks for the response.
Could you please tell it will be be accessible to knowledge admins? or only admins can access those orphan articles?

[Nayan Dhamane]

Hello @mickydash2001 ,

Not sure but I can say mostly knowledge admins will also have access to those articles.

[SoniaShridhar13]

@mickydash2001 Hi! At ServiceNow, it is recommended that users make Knowledge Bases which are no longer needed active = false rather than deleting them. This is reflected in the platform. 

This is by design to safeguard against the accidental deletion of Knowledge Articles, as many companies have thousands of articles stored within any given Knowledge Base, and having them deleted would have a large (negative) impact on their business.

Recommend to the customer that they simply making the Knowledge Base active = false. The default filter for Knowledge Bases is active = true, so the deactivated Knowledge Base will not show up in that list.

Please mark it helpful if it helps...

Thanks,

Sonia