Knowledge Article Scorecards

[DavidBReynolds]

Hello,

Are there any Knowledge Article scorecards included in the "out of the box" experience in the Xanadu release? I'd like to improve our knowledge articles and know where to focus our efforts. A scorecard could help as part of the solution. I'm just not sure where to find an article about it.

Thank-you.

[beth-catalynk]

ServiceNow has made great strides in adding this and several other tools to enable Knowledge-Centered Service (KCS®) quality reviews and associated reports.  Formerly called the AQI, the Content Standard Checklist (CSC) Review is a sampling of articles by Coaches to enable their coaching to focus on areas of greatest need. (It may be worth reviewing whether this the AQI tool could be renamed CSC?)  For the Coaching CSC Review process this tool is helpful, and could be improved with AI.  Are there any plans in ServiceNow's roadmap for a general purpose tool for review of all articles for specific quality indicators and related reports?

Knowledge-Centered Service (KCS®) is a registered Trademark of the Consortium for Service Innovation.

[qprinsloo]

I'd agree with this feedback. AQI is a very manual exhaustive process.  I was not aware of this shift to content standard checklists but is sort of what we naturally migrated to with an AI solution. We just recently setup a custom Now Assist skill that evaluates certain new knowledge articles or edits to knowledge article against a list of criteria. We actually use a "core" knowledge article that lists this guidance so it is open to other authors. This way it is clear what the expectation is for each article. The article is then evaluated by this Now Assist skill and given a score. Then we leverage a flow to either approve or reject the article based on this score. If the score is below threshold, the skill also provides feedback on why the article was not approved and provides an improved re-written draft back to the author that abides by the guidelines. All this leverages the OOTB feedback tasks and approval already on the knowledge article workflow. Again, we just recently implemented this so it is a little early to provide feedback on its effectiveness long term. That said, it is my believe that controlling the content before it gets published as well as leveraging Now Assist to perform this function greatly reduces the administrative overhead and will hopefully lead to quality articles in the long term.

. 

[David Kay]

When we (members of the Consortium) decided to shift from Article Quality Index (AQI) to the Content Standard Checklist, we had two big motivations:

1. We wanted to focus on the process, not the number (the "Index.")  The intent of the sampling is primarily as a coaching tool, not for grading.  So there may be some environments--especially involving BPOs--where grading is necessary, but there will be many more where it is not.
2. The other thing is that "quality" is a bit of a misnomer for what we're assessing.  There's no doubt that technical accuracy is an extremely important part of quality, but--by design--a technical review is not part of the Content Standard Checklist assessment process.  It really just checks whether we're following the content standard by evaluating a list of criteria...so the new name kind of wrote itself!

So the KCS community still feels like sampling articles to evaluate how well they follow the Content Standard is a very valuable exercise. Our experience is that you don't have to sample many per person to learn how things are going and to identify coachable moments when they exist.

As for automation, lots of companies are using GenAI tools to automate many of these checks...although I think it's a better approach to use GenAI up front to help people follow the content standard from the get-go.

[MichelleMSmith]

Hi everyone 👋

We’re about a year into our KM journey and recently started using AQI. I wanted to share some thoughts on how it’s helped us, and how we see it fitting into the broader picture of KM maturity.

AQI (Article Quality Index) has been a great starting point for us. It focuses on measuring the quality of the knowledge article —things like structure, clarity, findability, and relevance. It’s not about the individual author, but about the content as a whole. While the review process is manual (and would be manual even without AQI), having a framework to assess articles has helped us build consistency and identify patterns in what makes content useful.

The key cultural shift here was getting our team to value quality over quantity. AQI gave us a shared language to talk about what “good” looks like, and helped us move away from just publishing for the sake of it. It’s still a bit of a box-ticking exercise, but it’s one that’s helping us build a foundation.

On the other hand, the Content Standard Checklist is a more advanced tool. It’s designed to measure the performance of individual knowledge contributors—how well they apply standards like tone, formatting, and reuse of existing knowledge. This requires a very different culture: one that supports coaching, feedback, and continuous improvement.

To use the checklist effectively, you need people in coaching roles who can guide others, not just audit them. It’s still manual, but the focus shifts from compliance to growth and learning. That’s a big leap, and one we’re working toward.

So in our experience:

• AQI is a great entry point for teams starting to care about article quality.
• Content Standard Checklist is a maturity goal, requiring a culture of coaching, trust, and a shared commitment to excellence.

Both are valuable, but they serve different purposes and require different levels of KM maturity. Happy to share more if anyone’s curious about how we’re using AQI day-to-day or planning for the next stage!

[Aerin]

I love this comparison, thank you. Now I'm wondering, do you think it's possible to run AQI and CSC simultaneously? I suspect I'm looking at years where we have teams that are just onboarding to the concept of Knowledge Management who would benefit from AQI alongside teams that have been writing articles for several years now and would be ready to shift to a CSC mentality.