Duplicate article number issue during knowledge article migration from vendor instance

[Gopi22]

Hi Everyone,

We are currently in the process of importing Knowledge Articles from a vendor-managed ServiceNow instance into our internal instance. During this migration activity, we have encountered an issue related to duplicate article numbers.
Specifically, some of the articles being imported from the source (vendor) instance have article numbers that already exist in our target instance, but these correspond to entirely different content. As a result, we are facing conflicts during the import process.

Challenges Observed:
- Knowledge article numbers (number field) are not unique across instances.
- Import attempts result in duplication conflicts.

We want to retain both:
- Existing articles in our instance
- Incoming articles from the vendor instance

What is the recommended strategy to handle duplicate Knowledge Article numbers during cross-instance migration?

Thanks in advance for your support.

Regards,

Gopikrishnan

[Aanchal Agarwa1]

Hi @Gopi22 ,

This is a common challenge in cross-instance migrations. Here's a two-part recommended approach.

Step 1 — Check and advance the number counter before importing

Before starting the import, go to sys_number.list and find the Knowledge Article (kb_knowledge) number record. Identify the highest article number currently in your target instance, then manually advance the counter in sys_number beyond that value.

This ensures any new articles created after the import — including those created by the import process itself — will receive numbers that don't conflict with what already exists in your instance.

Step 2 — Don't sync the number field; use a correlation field instead

If you need to retain the vendor's original article number for traceability or reference purposes, do not map it to the number field during import. Instead:

1. Create a new field on kb_knowledge — e.g. u_source_article_number
2. Map the vendor's original article number into this correlation field during import
3. Let ServiceNow auto-generate a new, unique number for each imported article
4. Use u_source_article_number to cross-reference the vendor's content if needed post-migration

[Tanushree Maiti]

Hi @Gopi22 ,

To avoid conflicts while retaining both article sets, import the vendor articles through a ServiceNow Import Set and Transform Map.

Use a transform script to add a prefix (like "Vendor-") to the incoming article numbers, preserving the original vendor IDs and ensuring they do not overlap with existing kb_knowledge records.

[Gopi22]

Hi @Tanushree Maiti , 
Thank you for getting back to me.
Challenge with this approach would be, the standard CSV/EXCEL export contains only the fields in kb_knowledge table. It does not include attachments, images stored as attachments, etc., 

Thanks,

Gopikrishnan