Knowledge Article Template / Mass Change

[User144187]

We have a large number of articles within our Public KB that use a standardized template.  At the end of each article, there is a blurb about contacting the Help Desk with any additional questions which also includes the contact information.

The question was asked that if the phone number, email, name, whatever was ever changed... if it could change across all of the published KBA's as opposed to editing each one individually.  The thought was that this would work like a header/footer on a multi-page Word document.

I would suspect that we are probably out of luck with our existing content but if there was a way to set this up for a new content going forward - that would be helpful.

Thanks!

[SusanWinKY]

Just some initial thoughts... nothing I've done myself.  These are a few options I would consider if I had to do what you're attempting to do.

If you are not using Knowledge Blocks, you could enable that, create a knowledge block for the Help Desk contact info, and advise knowledge authors to add that knowledge block to every article where it is applicable. Then, I would hope that any time that knowledge block is updated, the update would reflect in every article that uses it.

If you are displaying articles in a service portal, you could modify the page that displays the article so that it contains a new widget that contains the Help Desk contact info. Then, you wouldn't need to add that content to individual articles. This would be my preferred approach if all articles need to display the content, or if there is a way to programmatically determine whether the article should display it (i.e., all articles from a particular knowledge base).

Or, you could modify your article template to add a new field (read only with the Help Desk contact info as the default field value) so that it will always display on your articles. This should work whether you are viewing articles in a service portal or the platform UI.

As for updating the existing articles, you could try a fix script but there could be issues with versioning, workflow, notifications being sent, etc.

[Jason Sturgeon]

Interesting timing of your question for me. I am in the process of enabling knowledge blocks and writing about how to use them in our environment. Susan's recommendations are spot on. For me, I am leaning on the idea of leveraging knowledge blocks as I am expecting to grow some communities of practice outside of the IT space where I work and they could use that capability for their own needs as well.

Some notes from the product documentation are below. Something that caught my eye is this statement that I proved incorrect in our environment: 'Knowledge blocks are available for use in Now Platform only.'

To use knowledge blocks in your application, you must activate knowledge blocks. For information on what components are installed with the feature, see Components installed with knowledge blocks.

Note: Activating knowledge blocks automatically activates Knowledge Management Advanced, which enables advanced features such as article versioning. Knowledge blocks can be used with or without the article versioning feature. To disable the feature, see Disable the article versioning feature.

[Lauren Methena]

I third knowledge blocks. We use them for material repeated across articles.

We use them to hide content within an article by applying Can Read criteria to the block.

And it's fabulous, because you change your information and it's magically changed across your entire knowledge base.

You can even attach documents, PDFs, etc., to each block.

Feel free to reply if you have follow-up questions. The other comments supply the logistical info about turning them on, etc. I can talk a little bit about them from a content management perspective.

Good luck!

Lauren