Can we remove indexing work that is in progress?

[Marek Stepien]

By mistake we started twice an AI Search indexing job for the Knowledge (kb_knowledge) table. 

Since the indexing takes over 13 hours, we would like to remove one of the indexing job. 

Can we delete one indexing job from "AI Search > AI Search Index > Indexed Sources > Knowledge Table > Indexing History > indexing" that is in progress?   If we delete, what impact should we expect? 

[Maik Skoddow · Accepted solution]

Hi @Marek Stepien 

If you force-delete an in-progress indexing record from the "Indexing History," ServiceNow does not guarantee that the underlying indexing process will actually stop. The background job may continue running, as it is managed by the scheduler and event processor, not just the record in the UI.

Interrupting or deleting an indexing job mid-process can lead to incomplete or corrupted search indexes. This may result in missing or inconsistent search results for end users until a full re-index is completed.

If the duplicate job is causing severe performance issues, open a case with ServiceNow Support. They have tools to intervene at the scheduler or event queue level, which is safer than deleting records from the UI.

Maik