Set up 301 and 404 Redirects For Retired Knowledge Articles

[Manal AQUIL]

Hi Community members,

As per below URL, we have new feature in Tokyo for knowledge: Ability to set up 301 and 404 redirects for retired articles.

https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/tokyo-servicenow-platform/page/product/knowledge-management/conce...

So far I have explored that in Tokyo, on click of retire button it will pop up a window which will ask us to add a replacement article . But despite adding replacement article, when I try to search for retired article in knowledge portal it doesn't redirect to replacement article. 

Kindly, help me navigate how to setup 301 redirection to replacement article when we search for a retired article in portal which is attached to replacement article otherwise it should redirect to 404 record not found.

Regards,
Manal Aquil

[Allen Andreas]

Hello,

The functionality and its intention, at least from my understanding, was not to now make retired articles searchable. You can, of course, adjust the out of box behavior to allow for retired articles to appear in search. That's up to you and I believe you've found another thread where there was information about how to adjust that if you wanted.

It's simply to provide a helpful redirection for articles that are retired, if the user somehow still accesses them (whether from a direct URL, not updated link in SN, or if OOTB functionality was changed to allow retired to show up).

With that said, as you can see, the 301 works however, you're saying 404 does not work. You'd want to review your instance to ensure that the 404 error page is setup and available as the 404 page used, may be that one. So this speaks about the default page, but you'd also want to ensure that you have that page on your instance: https://docs.servicenow.com/en-US/bundle/tokyo-servicenow-platform/page/build/service-portal/concept...

Please mark reply as Helpful/Correct, if applicable. Thanks!

[Manal AQUIL]

Thanks, 

Moreover, despite following the steps mentioned in the URL shared, bookmarked knowledge articles are not getting redirected to 404 page.

https://docs.servicenow.com/en-US/bundle/tokyo-servicenow-platform/page/build/service-portal/concept...

[Allen Andreas · Accepted solution]

Hi,

After reading through the documentation, again, and then testing things within my own Tokyo instance. I can say that the functionality for redirection when accessing a retired article, that has an article specified in the "Replacement Article" field, does work and redirect to the selected article.

When an value is not selected for the "Replacement Article" field and you access that retired article, if you have higher level permissions (like admin), you'll see the retired article, if you don't  have higher level permissions, you'll see an error message that you can't access the article.

The above outcomes align to what I read in the documentation. The notes about the 301 and 404 codes do not state that they would be redirected to a 404 page.

So in the end, if a value is selected for the "Replacement Article" field, it'll redirect you. If no value is selected, then the behavior is that it tries to show you the retired article and if you don't have the correct permission to see it, you won't see it and instead see an error message, somewhat like what is mentioned in the documentation.

If you're expecting any other functionality and you feel there's a bug or issue with the platform, please submit a ticket to SN Support for further assistance. Otherwise, I'm glad I could answer your question and provide guidance which in turn resulted in you creating an article with a video to show others how it works, as I've mentioned above.

Take care! 🙂

Please mark reply as Helpful/Correct, if applicable. Thanks!

[Anand44]

Hi Allen,

I have enabled the replacement article feature in my tokyo upgraded instance. On click of retire button a pop up a window appears which asks to add a replacement article. But despite adding replacement article, when I try to open the retired article in the knowledge portal using copied permalink, it displays the retired article only (with retired written next to the article) rather than the added replacement article.

[vamshi krishna4]

Hi,

The information you have provided was very helpful. One quick question, Once the article is retired and if i used a replacement article and in the later point of time i want to remove the replacement article. How can we do that?

Thanks in advance.

Regards,

Vamshi