Clarification on Knowledge Article Moving to “Pending Retirement” State

[pavan patil]

Hi Team,

I would like to understand how a Knowledge Article moves to the Pending Retirement state in ServiceNow.

• Is this state triggered automatically based on a defined timeline or expiry date?
• Is there any scheduled job or workflow that controls this transition?
• Or does it require manual action from the Knowledge Manager/Owner?

Could you please clarify if there is a standard timeline configuration that moves an article to Pending Retirement?

Thank you in advance for your guidance.

[yashkamde]

Hello @pavan patil ,

The article moves to Pending Retirement only when the Knowledge Manager or Article Owner manually initiates the retirement process. Ootb, there is no scheduled job or automatic timeline that changes the state based on expiry or review dates. Those dates can trigger notifications, but they don’t alter the article’s lifecycle by default.

If an organization wants articles to retire automatically after a set period, that requires custom configuration (e.g., Flow Designer or scheduled jobs).

So, the standard behavior is: manual action → Pending Retirement → approval workflow → Retired.

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[satyasubraV3614]

Hello @pavan patil ,

1. When versioning is enabled, clicking the Retire UI Action which is available  to Knowledge Owners and Managers moves the Knowledge Article to the Pending Retirement state.

2.A Valid To date is set on the article form. Once this date has passed, the article is no longer visible on the portal; however, it remains in the Published state within the system.

[VaishnaviK3009]

Hi @pavan patil !!

In this instance, the Pending Retirement state for Knowledge Articles is controlled by an approval workflow. When an article is set to Pending Retirement, it enters an approval stage called “Pending retirement Approval Knowledge Base Management.”

The article must be approved before moving forward to retirement. If approved, a subsequent workflow retires the article. If rejected, the article is moved back to its previous state.

Therefore, the transition to Pending Retirement involves manual or automated initiation, but the actual retirement requires approval via this workflow.

This process is configured with scripts and workflows and ensures proper governance over article retirement.

Mark this as Helpful if it clarifies the issue.
Accept the solution if this answers your question.

Regards,
Vaishnavi
Associate Technical Consultant

[pavan patil]

Hi All,

Thank you for your responses and the clarification provided.

In addition to this, I have another question. I would like to make the Publish button visible to ITIL users on the Knowledge Article form in Service Operations Workspace.

I reviewed the related UI Action and noticed that there are no specific roles associated with it. Could you please guide me on how we can control the visibility of the Publish button for ITIL users in Workspace?

Thank you for your support.