Document repository for content connected to Knowledge articles

[Lori L]

As we create our HR knowledge content for HRSD, we have cases where we want to provide a link to view the full policy (without making the full policy a knowledge article) or to share content from a 3rd party (perhaps a benefits brochure as a PDF).

A significant amount of our employees will access HRSD via NOWMobile and/or on a personal device as they are field sales & service or plant/ warehouse employees. We seem to run into different hurdles related to version control and/or security access as we consider different options.

How are others handling storage of content such as full policy documents or PDF files to ensure version control and a good employee experience?

[Claude DAmico]

I know the response was directed at Wendy, but accessing SharePoint content on a mobile device should not be an issue. I do that regularly myself. The only thing that is needed is a document reader which most devices nowaday have by default.

Documents my teams store on the articles/blocks are stored only there. We don't have duplicate repositories of documents so we don't have to do maintenance in so many locations. Redundancy is nice, but ServiceNow also should be backed up regularly in the event of data or system corruption. We also have a review policy in place where we review different sets of content after specific periods of time to ensure content is accurate and up to date at all times. To be specific about ServiceNow functionality, attachments from all tables are stored in the sys_attachment table even though they are displayed on the referenced records in the sys_attachment record.

[Claude DAmico · Accepted solution]

I agree with @Wendy25 about the links or attachments. The where part is always determined by a number of factors. If they must be stored in a location outside of ServiceNow, adding hyperlinks going to the respective repository to the article/block would address that. If they do not, you could just attach the document at the appropriate article or block level (whichever you are using to control access to the content) and add hyperlinks to the attached document for downloading.

[AP4]

Hello,

You may want to look at the Managed Document app within ServiceNow... Managed Document (doc repository) can link directly to Knowledge Articles within ServiceNow.. Refer to below link. 

https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/tokyo-servicenow-platform/page/product/managed-documents/referenc...

If my feedback makes sense, please mark it as helpful.. 

Thank you

[Michele27]

I'm not sure that the ServiceNow Knowledge Management module meets the ISO standards for Document Management.  In my organisation, we would classify a Policy Document as a "high value record", where various controls need to be in place to manage the life cycle of the document.  So our high value records tend to be stored in either a Document Management System or SharePoint.  Where possible we would provide links to the source document in the knowledge article.

[Leri Andrews]

In my organisation I strongly encourage authors to make policies into full knowledge articles using a template specifically created for HR policies. We make allowances for markets where legally they need to see the signature on the original. Because there is versioning, validity dates, user-criteria and named authors it meets the needs of a suitable repository for such documents.

We used to have a Salesforce intranet site that linked people to a SharePoint site for documents but managing it was very difficult. People loaded new documents instead of replacing them, breaking the urls and we had terrible feedback from users who were often repeatedly asked to log in. So moving to ServiceNow was an opportunity to get rid of that. 

External brochures are usually to be found in the supplier website where they are most likely to be required - e.g. you want to look at the dental insurance policy when choosing your benefit, so we send people to the benefits site with a deep link if possible. The trick is having a sufficiently rich 'signpost' article that will return in search - and that's not easy if you have AI search where you can no longer rely on the meta field. 

I know we are not out-of-the-box in many areas so the problems listed below may not be the same for you.

1. You can replace attachments without republishing (so much for version control!)

2. Using the ServiceNow viewer for pdf attachments is very hit and miss, especially for pdf forms.  We had to switch that off so all attachments download instead.

3. Stopping AI search returning just attachments (thereby removing any context provided in the article and not giving users the option to give feedback/useful rating) is too difficult.  We have set it so when you click on it we force the article to open instead.  (beware the 'link attachment' field on the article)

4. People love to hyperlink to attachments in an article using the url instead of choosing the actual attachment.  This means when they replace the attachment the hyperlink doesn't work any more.

5. Some documents need to be referenced from multiple places so they should be attached in ONE article and all the other articles point to that article (not to the attachment), taking care to use the link that will always take people to the latest version.

6. Make sure you give people a way to find all of them. Our naming convention allows people to type in 'India HR Policy' into search and they'll all come back in the search results but they have still created index articles in some countries and are then tasked with maintaining an article full of links to other articles. 

7. Attachments come back in search results with a random extract which may or may not be useful whereas with articles you can get the 'description' field to come back in the search results.

8. People like to print out policies and don't like the way articles come out when they cntrl+p