Can an article sit on multiple KBs

[Jen_C]

Hi All,

I have multiple knowledge bases, service desk agent facing and customer self-serve facing. There are some articles that are relevant for both audiences. I was using AI to try to discover if one article can be assigned to multiple KBs to avoid duplication and maintenance efforts. This is the result I got back from AI but I do not know if its correct. Any advice and guidance would be greatly appreciated.

Can a service now knowledge article sit on multiple knowledge bases?

Yes, a ServiceNow knowledge article can be associated with multiple knowledge bases. This can be useful if you have multiple departments or teams that need access to the same article. By associating the article with multiple knowledge bases, you can ensure that it is easily accessible to all relevant parties. To associate an article with multiple knowledge bases, you can simply select the appropriate knowledge bases when creating or editing the article.

how do you select multiple knowledge bases

To select multiple knowledge bases for a ServiceNow knowledge article, follow these steps:

1. Open the knowledge article that you want to associate with multiple knowledge bases.
2. Click on the "Edit" button to edit the article.
3. Scroll down to the "Knowledge Base" section of the article form.
4. Click on the magnifying glass icon next to the "Knowledge Base" field to open the "Lookup" window.
5. Select the first knowledge base that you want to associate with the article and click "Add".
6. Repeat step 5 for each additional knowledge base that you want to associate with the article.
7. Click "Update" to save your changes.

Once you have associated the article with multiple knowledge bases, it will be accessible from each of those knowledge bases. This can be helpful for ensuring that the article is easily discoverable by all relevant parties.

Thank you in advance

Jen

[Mark Manders]

Nope. That's the reason AI shouldn't be used when replying to questions on the community. It keeps giving wrong answers. 

There are some ideas on the idea portal for this, but currently it's not possible to have an article show up in multiple knowledge bases. You could create a 'general' knowledge base that you make available for all users and use user criteria on the article to show who does and who doesn't have access to the article itself. That way they can always be found. But if you want them to show up in multiple bases, you will need to create multiple versions.

One thing you could consider, in that case, is to relate the articles together based on something (which is all customized) and use a flow to update them all, in case one is updated. 

[Tom_T]

Totally agree. I was surprised by this answer and just tried to figure it out. Before you posting AI answers it would be useful to check if this really works.... and it doesn't. Even though I wish that ServiceNow would build this feature because IMHO it makes a lot of sense.  But I guess it can be difficult - due to some considerations. What will happen if some KB Mgrs approve the article and others don't? AAnd how will this be refelcted on the article itself so the owner of the article knows in which KBs his article was published and which it was not? Different tenplates? Different categories?

[Mark Manders]

The difficulty is in how it has been set up from the start. The solution could be easy: make a m2m relationship between the article and knowledge base. You still have a 'main knowledge base' where the article maintenance/approval is done, just like now, but you can add (like with catalog items) where else you want to show them. Let's say an IT article is also meant for HR, you have it created on the IT KB and set it to be available on HR. IT has to approve the content, HR has the possibility to say 'no, we don't want this' and remove it from their KB, but that's up to them. 

But, fact remains, this can't currently be done within the system. 

[Jen_C]

Thank you for your response and insights Mark. 

The general knowledge base wouldn't work due to the amount of countries we support and the different instances of ServiceNow each region is on, but I appreciate the suggestion.

If I were to use the relate article feature, how would I set up a flow for them, or is this something that would have to manually monitor - I have not used relate article before so how it works is all new to me.