inactive author and ownership group of an article

[Gianluca Roncat]

During an evaluating session prior to update we receive a warning about some articles that have an inactive author.

I suppose that an active author is required for proper maintenance, but what about ownership group? Set an active ownership group with an inactive author is correct or the active author is mandatory?

[Eoghan Sinnott]

It depends on what that persons role serves in your organisation. If you need the "author" to be responsible for always being the point of contact for that article, then you need to set up some guardrails so you are proactive in identifying inactive authors. For my organisation, the author is only the knowledge writer that added the article to the knowledge base. They aren't a technical SME, they aren't a point of contact and it doesn't matter if the original author is no longer in the company. We use the Contact field and Ownership groups for that.

You could add a report to your dashboard for articles that have an inactive author, and whenever an article shows on it, then you can look for an alternative contact before it comes to expiry review or there is feedback to action. You could also do this for the contact field etc. 

Regards,

Eoghan

ServiceNow Rising Star 2024

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[Rafael Batistot · Accepted solution]

@Gianluca Roncat 

You’re on the right track by distinguishing between author and ownership group, but let’s clarify how they are treated in ServiceNow Knowledge Management — especially during evaluation and upgrades.

Definitions

• Author (kb_knowledge.author):
  
• This is usually the person who originally created the article.
• It’s a reference to a user (sys_user) record.
• ServiceNow still treats this as an important field during evaluations and upgrades (e.g., validating article ownership, permissions, notifications).
• If the author is inactive, it can trigger warnings because:
  
• Notifications or assignments may fail.
• Responsibility for updates is ambiguous.
• Ownership group (kb_knowledge.ownership_group):
  
• This is the group responsible for maintaining the article after publication.
• It’s essential for workflows like article review, retirement, and approvals.
• It can override the importance of the individual author in long-term article lifecycle.
• The group must be active and have members who can act on workflows.