Comments on Knowledge Articles - Best Practice?

[Laurie12]

I'm looking at turning on the Comments field at the bottom of the knowledge article.  For the last five years I've had them turned off and only use the Helpful button and Flag Article, which is working well. I publish work practices, procedures and policies in my knowledge base and all updates/changes go through an approval process. I'm concerned about having open Comments on the articles that may mislead people or cause confusion. If someone makes an incorrect comment about a procedure/policy and others act on it, there may be risk. I'm also worried about the maintenance of comments. Does anyone have any experience with Comments working well on articles or would you recommend staying with the feedback process? If you use Comments, do you have any rules around how you monitor and maintain them? Looking forward to your comments!

[Eoghan Sinnott]

Hi Kamidi, 

You need to enable the property to create an actionable feedback task when the article is marked as not helpful. See the following link for the specific steps. 

https://support.servicenow.com/kb?id=kb_article_view&sysparm_article=KB0712422

[Peter102]

We currently have comments enabled but I am looking to see what alternative options we have. All our comments generate actionable feedback tasks which our teams action. I want to keep this ability using the "Flag Article" pop up instead. Our issue is like others that have posted here already:

• Comments get used as a way to contact IT Support (not feedback on the article)
• Comments don't disappear when a new version is released meaning they can be extremely dated.
• None of our teams respond to comments/use them beyond the actionable feedback task.

At the very least we are wanting to hide them but more likely I will revert to ootb and use the flag article button (thats the plan anyway).

[TJohns19]

We've turned comments off on every desk (3) that I've worked on.  Star ratings and article flags create sufficient KFTs updating KBAs.  As Peter102 stated the comments are not removed when a KBA is updated and becomes confusing and dated.  Due to that, people start ignoring them. So if you feel like they could be of benefit to you, then tackle when they are cleared out.  It would be great if KM Admins had access to work the comments and clear them and if a update to the KBA also cleared them.  

[Jana Perry]

YES - an automation for that function of updating responses, integrated into the versioning of the article publication dates would be brilliant...wonderful idea!  I vote for this to be implemented asap, ServiceNow!  😀

[shannont]

Hi @Laurie12,

Much like the majority of comments here, I've not used the Comments area as it's messy and unnecessary in my opinion based on the feedback options available for Knowledge.  I find that Flagging, Rating and Helpful yes/no provide enough feedback.  Utilizing the Feedback tasks functionality is key and in addition, any feedback provided via these means is also included on the Feedback tab in the Related List area of the specific article.  There is also reporting that can be utilized.  So, with all of the above and just not caring for the way Comments on the article look in general, I feel just taking advantage of the OOB feedback capabilities provided, you should be covered!