Administration -> Article Template vs. Create a template

[reinah]

Knowledge -> Administration -> Article Templates

vs. 

Lower left hand side 

Create a template 

(see attachments for further clarifications)

I'm trying to create a standard "template" wherein when creating a new knowledge base article in a specific knowledge base, it will automatically begin with our company logo, certain headers / fonts / etc. with some standard text in the fields.

I was given a guide on how to create and modify a standard template, (administration -> article templates) but this seems to not cover the same needs as the "create a template" option which allows for HTML input as well.

Attempts at using the form builder/form design/form layout has only led to further confusion. 

What is the difference between these two features and what is actually ideal for use? The SNOW documentation here has simply confused me more.

Thanks for any assistance in advance. 

[Vickie Runyon]

Article template is the way to go for customizing the content of KB articles.

The other template button is to build an automation that fills in the blanks for you with custom content. This option is used most in our instance for Incidents - where you have the same category/subcategory, same work notes, same resolution, etc. Then, you apply the template to the Incident to fill in the blanks consistently.

For KB templates, you can create new fields, and determine the formatting for the fields too. Set a standard font, set up a heading, etc. You can use HTML code but you need to put it in explicitly - the Tiny MCE toolbar is not available in the article template. For example, to format my heading, I put the following text in the Heading Style box: 
background-color:#1B6875;
color:#FFFFFF;
font-family:Verdana;
font-size:20pt;
margin-top:0px;

You do want to be careful with text color - especially if you specifically call out the body text to be black, then the text will be invisible to someone who is using dark mode.

If you want to put standard text in every article, I recommend using Knowledge Blocks for that. The KB template feature does not support that.

Another caution - you cannot apply a new/different template to existing articles. You will need to create a brand-new article with the new template. Copy/paste is your friend to move the content over. Then, the old article would be retired. If you are using the Retire Replacement feature, any saved links to the old article can be redirected to the new article easily.

With this caveat, it is very important to get your article template formatting set before you create a lot of articles with it. Lots of testing and feedback from a group would be recommended.

With a custom template, the articles that use that template are put into a custom table (with table fields for each article template field). This is why articles cannot cross templates.

[reinah]

If I'm looking to have a standard text and formatting, as well as certain fields automatically being filled out, what is the best way to do this? 

So that I have defined appropriate CSS for the formatting, but also have already for an Alerts category, for example:

Title: Known Issue- Short description

Article Body:

<img src="logo"> </img>
<header>Title of Article (matches title above) here</header>

<p>(Short description of issue)</p>

<p>(More information behind issue and description of customer impact, ways to recognize issue, such as error messages)</p> 

<p>(Next steps that we will take or that customer must take to resolve the issue)</p> 

wherein the CSS is already defined but also the text is filled out.

[Vickie Runyon]

Have you explored the Known Error template, which is out of the box in ServiceNow?

It has Description, Workaround, and Cause fields already created.