Why are we still using SYS ID´s on URLs?

[Fernando Schep1]

Hi Community, happy 2022!

I am a bit frustrated that the platform still uses sys_id´s on URL´s instead of using Permalinks to direct tickets including KB Articles as a standard.

I talked about this across the platform through this idea that if you also share the same view it would be awesome if you can vote it up.

Does anyone know if permalinks are coming as standard at least to Knowledge Management? It would be so much easier for our users to know they would be able to share an article by copying the link and that that link will always work no matter how many versions of the article exist.

Today Permalink seems to be disassociated from the main URL of the article.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts

Fernando

[AndyNow]

I agree although I thought Knowledge already has the Permalinks which uses the Knowledge Number. 

As below if I click the Copy Permalink and I share that URL it will always display the latest article version. Where as using the SysID it only shows that version and not the latest one which is rubbish for user experience.

Permalink generates this link:
https://instance.service-now.com/kb_view.do?sysparm_article=KB0010021

 I've also upvoted your idea!

[Fernando Schep1]

Yes, Knowledge already offers a link (at the bottom) with the permalink. This shouldn't even exist, the permalink should be the URL of the article.

Users do not understand what a "Permalink" even is. They dont need to think about it even. They should be able to just share a link, but if they do and the article receives an update, the old link becomes broken. 

This is pure user experience and can be greatly improved as expressed on the idea linked above.

[Lauren Methena]

Good question and quite agree. Yes, we can hit "copy permalink" in order to create the permalink, and that is the standard we've tried to create and communicate (i.e., always use the permalink when sharing an article).

However, so many people still don't do this that we had to create a customization so that article URLs that are shared will redirect to the newest version of the article. (Before this customization, when people used a URL instead of a permalink in an article or email, the link would simply not work, causing frustration. Sometimes, I wouldn't even be able to tell which article the user was trying to get to because the link wouldn't work and they wouldn't give any other context clues, such as title.)

The permalink works great on many levels. Make it the universal standard. Then, we don't have to go to these great lengths to teach users NOT to use the article URL - a behavior they use everywhere else and wouldn't presume not to work here.

[Mike Van Vooren]

I upvoted Idea as well.  We are enabling Versioning on our Instance and our KM community is not used to the difference between using the URL from the browser with the sys_id versus "Copy Permalink".  Our SN developers really didn't want to customize a redirect similar to what Lauren describes, so it will be interesting to see how this goes.