knowledge state

[narsimha reddy]

Currently when an article is updated and republished the old version is marked as "Outdated". I'm not sure if this is out of the box functionality but it has caused some confusion and I wanted to see what we could do to change this.

It would make sense for the old versions to be considered "Retired" as they are no longer published. The outdated state would make more sense for articles that are past expiration but still published/visible to users. A story is already in place to make sure expired articles are not getting unpublished so this would be a dependency.

Ultimately I want to refine the buckets of states that knowledge articles are in. Either by changing how we're identifying Outdated and Retired articles, or creating a new state called "Flagged for review / Expired" that we can mark the articles past their valid to date. Maybe this is better done through meta tags? I also want to make sure the older versions aren't clogging up the list views when reviewing articles, is there a way to hide the past versions unless we're specifically attempting to review them? Having 5 copies of an article in different states bloats the list and makes it difficult to find what you're looking for.

let me know what can be suggested to client

[Michele27]

I personally don't have an issue with "Outdated" articles - essentially they are just the past versions - which can easily be filtered out from any list view or report.

In our instance of ServiceNow, articles past the "Valid to date" are no longer searchable via the Knowledge homepage, Agent workspace or the support portal.  Note:  the articles are still in a Published state.  A  ServiceNow email is sent to all members of the ownership group, 30 days prior to the valid to date, requesting review, update and republish of the article.  Once republished, the review cycle restarts.

I would encourage knowledge owners/agents to use dashboards to track outstanding activities e.g.

1. Articles awaiting approval.
2. Outstanding feedback tasks.
3. Articles approaching the valid to date.
4. Articles rejected
5. etc. etc. etc.

[Barry_W]

Re: the question of bloated lists, I would suggest you apply filters to your lists to exclude any states (workflows) that you don't wish to see. You can then save and share, or create a report and - as Michele suggested - add the report to a dashboard so users don't have to reapply a filter each time. I'd agree that having multiple versions of an article can make the list view confusing, however its a fairly simple operation to exclude those you don't wish to see (retired, outdated, drafts etc.). The same logic can be applied to those articles that have passed their 'Valid to' date.

Thanks,

Barry.