Is there no way to pull down an article to edit it without a version staying published?

[jeanderson]

We are migrating to ServiceNow from Zendesk and we maintain a customer facing Help Center. This is now going to be on ServiceNow.  I am running into the issue where we often need to pull an article down from public facing in order to update it.  

If we "check out" the article then the current version stays published. And if I "retire" the article then I have no way to edit it.   Both of these are not good solutions for us. 

What are possible work arounds so that we can "unpublish" to edit but not retire-- because we need to edit.  This is important when information is inaccurate and needs pulled down.  Its important for us to use the same KB number because we link to help content in comms to customers and in our apps. 

Looking for solutions to this poor functionality--hoping others have some solutions for this. 

[Chaitanya ILCR]

Hi @jeanderson ,

Have you tried fix script with setworkflow false

example script

var kbGr = new GlideRecord("kb_knowledge");
kbGr.addEncodedQuery('your encoded query of articles you want to unpublish')
kbGr.query();
while (kbGr.next()) {
    kbGr.workflow_state = 'review';
    kbGr.setWorkflow(false);
    kbGr.autoSysFields(false);
    kbGr.update()
}

to unpublish and republish use the setworkflow false that should take care of your problem

Please mark my answer as helpful/correct if it resolves your query.

Regards,
Chaitanya

[John_Wilkes]

I would use a valid to date on your article. change this to the day before today to hide the article from your users. Then you can check out the article and complete the update while hiding any information that may cause issues.