Trying to understand how knowledge article formatting works

[tomsgriz]

Hello. I'm new to the Community so apologies if I've posted in the wrong area. Please point me in the right direction if I have! I'm not sure how to pose my question, so I'll provide an example of what I'm trying to understand.

• In web design, for example, I can use an external style sheet (CSS) to control elements on the published page, such as text formatting. 
• If I decide that I want to change a specific style, such as my paragraph <p> style, I just make that change in one place... in the CSS.
• As long as there no inline styles applied in the HTML, which override the external CSS, I can be sure that my CSS update will work across all of my pages.

I know I'm over-simplifying, but how is this accomplished with ServiceNow knowledge articles? Where are the styles located for the default, Standard template? 

• I'm a knowledge admin, but I don't have full admin privileges.
• Our organization uses only the Standard template.
• I don't want to apply styles at the article level because I want to be able to make global formatting changes whenever necessary so that all articles in all of our KBs are updated.
• I've looked at the Service Portal settings, but to my (limited) knowledge, these settings are for the portal settings only and do not apply to the knowledge article formatting.

Thanks for reading. As you can tell, I'm totally confused and I'm just hoping that someone can point me in the right direction. Much appreciated!

[Swapna Abburi]

Hi @tomsgriz 

You can configure CSS file in style sheets and reference this style sheet in article html body. For example:

<link href="sys_id of style sheet.cssdbx" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"></link>

However, you need content_admin role to work with Style Sheets.

[tomsgriz]

Thank you, Swapna. I will request content_admin role and try this out!

[tomsgriz]

Sorry for the late reply. I was able to get the content_admin credentials, but I'm still not able to figure out how to find and edit the Standard article template. Maybe I'm asking the question the wrong way. Here's what I want to do:

1. Create multiple knowledge articles using the Standard article template.
2. Edit the CSS for the Standard article template so that all articles using that template are updated.

Is this possible? Should I be using themes instead?

It seems so basic, but I can't figure out how to do it. I don't want to configure styles/formatting at the article level because I need to be able to apply formatting globally if my team requests a change.

[Aerin]

In order to change the formatting and have it applied to all articles, we ended up having to customize the Portal widget. We're still on the old Portal (not ESC), so I'm not sure if it will be the same situation on the newer portal.