Identifying Content Changes

[Sara N]

Hello, all!

I am working on providing some ideas for our knowledge article owners around how to make changes to article content easier to identify - i.e., a step in a process was changed on an existing article. In the past, using other knowledge platforms, I've used things like change notes or small icons to indicate exactly where on an article the content was changed. These are, of course, manual processes that require a bit of maintenance (i.e., remembering to remove icons after a certain period of time). I'm wondering if there are any ways ServiceNow might have a way to do something like this automatically (without trying to manually compare versions) or if your teams have created a process you use.

Thanks in advance!

Sara

[Keryn]

I don't know of any built-in method in ServiceNow.  In both cases below, I supported the IT Service Desk agents with troubleshooting articles.  They never complained that these methods weren't working for them. 

In the past, we marked changes with something like this "(Updated dd/mm/yyyy)" or "NEW (dd/mm/yyyy)" and we would remove that label after minimum of three months.  

In my current position, we have a "Knowledge Content Changes" table in the article with four columns: Date Updated, Editor, Description of Changes, and Date Copy Sent to Owner.  We only keep up to 10 rows in a published article at a time so it requires deleting the older rows every now and then. 

[cynlink1]

Hi Keryn,

Would you be willing to share the specifics of how you are creating new "Knowledge Content Changes' records/rows? Does a dialog box pop up when the editor pushes the 'Publish" button?

Thanks,

Cyn

[Tilly Penn]

I was thinking about this too.  In our instance, I (as Knowledge Manager) can see a Comments box where potentially the Author could explain what changes they are making, so an Approver could quickly see what they are approving. 
The only problem is, the Author (at the moment) can't see the Comments box.

To see the Comments field, go into the latest (draft) version of the article, click on the Approvals tab, click on "Requested" in the State column.  
Does anyone have any information on this Comments field and whether it might help us? 

[cynlink1]

We use the 'Compare' feature on the Service Operations Workspace. It identifies text changes which is the most import to us. However, it doesn't track formatting changes.

1. Copy the Knowledge article number
2. From the left-hand filter, type Service Operations Workspace
   
3. Once the Service Operations Workspace loads, paste the knowledge article number in the search field.
   
4. Click on the name of the knowledge article to open it.
5. Once the knowledge article opens, click on Related records.
   
6. Click on Article Versions, select two article versions, and then click Compare.
   
7. Review the articles side by side using the scroll bar to move up/down.