Automating knowledge article author updates

[Matthew Buckley]

Has anyone automated updating the author of a knowledge article to the last person to modify it? 

[Tanushree Maiti]

Hi @Matthew Buckley 

Automate this using Before Update BR or using script include and call it from proper place.

Refer KB: KB0852951 How do we change the author of an article? 

Resolution

The author field can be updated on a knowledge form just like any other field. Please see the steps below:

1. Out of box the Author field is not on the form, however this can be added to the form and updated. From the knowledge record view, right click form header > Configure > Form Layout and move Author from Available to Selected and Save
2. If article versioning in your instance is enabled, published articles will need to be checked out to update this field like any other field
- The other option is to set author in the system property glide.knowman.versioning.minor_edit_fields so these articles will not have to be checked out to update. Our documentation on the article versioning properties is below.
3. Update the Author to the new Author and Save

[Matthew Buckley]

I guess I need to better explain what we are looking at... Currently we have articles show the author. It also shows who the last person to modify the article is. The problem with the author field is that the person assigned as the author is whoever is the one that creates and publishes the article (which makes sense). However, for us this may be a business analyst temporarily assigned to create the article and upload it. It is then the owning group that is responsible for keeping the article up to date and own it. This is when the problem comes in. The owning group will have someone update the article but the author remains as the original business analyst. So when we do reporting on the articles, the author information isn't exactly accurate. And if a knowledge consumer has a question on an article, it is difficult for them to know who is the actual owner or author of the article because they usually only look at the author field. What we are trying to do is find a solution so that the author field shows the name of the last person to modify the article (and have the system do this automatically) instead of the name of the person who originally uploaded it.  

[kimberlyfor]

We have the following fields in the knowledge article form:
- Author

- Ownership Group (required field)

- SME (not required)
Depending on the ownership group, the SME field may or may not be populated. In your use case, having it required would help you. 

[Dave Littlejohn]

What about leveraging the "Revised By" field rather than updating the [original] Author field?