Retired vs. Expired Articles

[rosenst22]

Does anyone differentiate between articles that users hit the retire button for and then show was retired and articles that go past their valid to date and show as expired? If you can republish from both states, is the expired and retired state needed or can you consolidate into one category - retired? 

[rosenst22]

Aerin, some authors just let their article 'auto-retire' and go past the valid to date. Do you view those situations as a breakdown in process? Also, how are you addressing those situations where there is a breakdown in process? Essentially, how helpful and actionable is the expired vs. retired article data?

[Eoghan Sinnott]

From my experience I would think letting something "auto-retire" is a breakdown in a process. Retiring an article should be a conscience decision, and should always be traceable back to an action. If you have the date on the system when an article was put into a retired workflow, you can almost always track it back to a request/email, and have accountability to why it was removed.  

For articles that have gone passed their date we have a number of processes in place to see if it is still required. If it is in a Knowledge base that can be attached to INCs, we would look at the usage and see if it has been attached to any recent tickets. If it is still being used by support agents then it is needed and will be manually extended, owing to the KCS methodology of "reuse is review."
We also will reach out directly to the contact to review, or if no response is received then escalate to a manager.

[Aerin]

I agree with the earlier response. I am trying to build a deliberate knowledge management process, where content is actively reviewed - to make sure the information is correct, that it's still needed and used, that it is owned by the correct team, etc. My content creation teams get a monthly email reminding them of the content that is about to reach its valid to date and they are expected to review and republish them. If they don't, then we investigate why and consider a refresh of the team's training. We are working on having article creation and review linked in to our performance reviews. 

[expeters]

Wow, well said. Thank you for bringing further clarity. Looking forward to conveying your methods to my team internally. 

[Eoghan Sinnott]

I would very much encourage differentiating between the two. Retired articles have actively been removed from your knowledge system, as the information has been identified as no longer relevant.

Articles can go beyond their valid date for a number of reasons, like incorrect contact, contact being Out of Office etc. 
These articles are often still needed, and then you need to create a robust process in place to ensure that the number of articles gone past this is 0.

I would recommend creating a dashboard that has upcoming article Valid To Dates so you can see what is approaching expiry, and then also see ones that have gone passed the expiry. You could also have a report for articles with an Invalid Contacts so that you can proactively catch articles that are not going to be reviewed.