An Update on Recently Archived Community Content

[David]

Update August 10, 2026 9a.m. PST:

As of this morning, we have recovered >99.9% of the content that was archived last week.

We appreciate your patience and apologize for any inconvenience you may have experienced. The post below offers more context on what we did, why we did it, and what we'll do in the future to avoid similar issues.

The Community Team

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Over the past few weeks, we archived a large amount of older content across the ServiceNow Community.

The goal behind this effort was to improve the quality and relevance of search results by reducing outdated content that may no longer reflect the current state of the platform, products, or best practices. As our products evolve, older posts can sometimes create confusion, lead developers to obsolete guidance, or make it harder to find current answers. The archival initiative was intended to help members find more relevant and accurate information more quickly. 

However, it's clear from your feedback that the experience was not what many of you expected.

What we learned

After the archival activity took place, we heard concerns from community members across the Community, SNDevs, and other channels. Many of you told us that valuable content had become difficult to access, that archived pages were still appearing in search results, and that there was not enough communication about what was changing or why. 

While the intent was to improve content quality and findability, we recognize that the rollout created frustration and uncertainty for some members of our community.

What we're doing now

We are actively working with our community platform provider to understand our options for restoring archived content at scale. We know many of you have asked whether archived discussions can be brought back, and that is currently an area we are investigating. 

As soon as we have clarity on what can be restored, how restoration would work, and any associated timelines, we will share an update with the community.

Our commitment going forward

This experience highlighted several important lessons for our team.

Before making future large scale content changes, we will:

• Publish a customer facing announcement before significant archival activities occur.
• Provide a clear explanation of why the change is being made and how it benefits the community.
• Establish and communicate a remediation or recovery plan before executing large scale content changes.
• Gather community feedback earlier in the process when changes may impact member access to historical content.
  
  

Thank you!

The ServiceNow Community exists because of the time, expertise, and generosity of the people who contribute to it every day. We appreciate everyone who took the time to share feedback, raise concerns, and help us understand the impact of this change.

Your feedback is helping us improve both our content strategy and the way we communicate future changes.

We'll continue to share updates as we learn more about restoration options and next steps.

Thank you for your patience and for helping make the ServiceNow Community better for everyone.

[NehaG8791370651]

Hi @David,

Thank you for the update and for listening to the developers on the ground. From a technical troubleshooting perspective, this was definitely a challenging few weeks!

While I completely understand the desire to prune obsolete UI14/UI16 posts or legacy workflow questions to keep search results clean, the reality of ServiceNow development is that the foundational backend of the platform is incredibly stable. The core GlideRecord API, fundamental Business Rule logic, and database schemas have remained remarkably consistent over the years.

Because of this, some of the most elegant, undocumented script solutions to highly obscure edge cases were written by community legends back in 2016 or 2017—and those scripts are still perfectly applicable in the Washington or Xanadu releases today. When that historical content was archived and un-indexed, developers lost access to a massive repository of surviving code snippets.

I am very relieved to hear the team is actively investigating a bulk restoration. Even if older posts are heavily flagged with a visual "Legacy Content" banner to warn new developers, keeping that raw code searchable and accessible is an absolute necessity for those of us doing complex implementations.

[JustineDavis]

@Mark Manders I hear your frustration, and honestly, it's deserved.

Regardless of the original intent behind the archival effort, the outcome our members experienced was a disruption in content you need. 

As of the latest update, approximately 93.7% of the impacted content has been restored (the script is running to fix). We're actively working through the remaining items and monitoring progress closely.

I know that doesn't erase the disruption or restore confidence overnight. Trust is built through actions, not statements. My commitment is that we'll be much more transparent about what happened, what we're learning, and what we're changing so we don't repeat this experience.

I appreciate you continuing to challenge us on this. The feedback from you and many others has been instrumental in helping us understand the real impact this had on the community. My door is always open if you'd like to discuss it directly.

[zachsherwood]

This was probably the worst idea that i've ever seen a company try and implement

[Simon Hendery]

While this has been a disappointing experience for users, I appreciate the genuine, candid, and sincere email I received from @David.

He's been honest enough to admit the irony of the situation, given ServiceNow's inaction regarding spam and AI slop in recent times. Thank you for your candor, David.