Embedded links in KBs and Catalog Items - how to keep them in MESP portal?

[Matthew Glenn]

Hey all, 

We have what I think would be a common problem, but one that I can't find an answer to. 

We have thousands of KBs and catalog items that contain embedded links in their body or description fields. These links are redirecting users to other areas of our employee center portal using a URL like this - "/portal?id=kb_article_view&sys_kb_id=sys_id". This works just fine for our standard web users, but not so much for Now Mobile app users (which uses the MESP portal). When the links are clicked from within the Now Mobile app, our employee center portal is loaded (since that is what the URL is configured with), which isn't the best of experiences for them.

Question is, does anyone know of a way to keep links clicked from within the MESP portal inside the MESP portal without modifying the original URL? We want to retain what functionality we can within our employee center portal, so modifying the URLs is not an option. Adding to the complexity, this would only apply to URLs that are pointing to the employee center portal. We have some external links configured that should continue to open in the users mobile browser.

This is the only other relevant post I can find on the community, but the responses aren't something that would work for us. 

[James Chun · Accepted solution]

Hi @Matthew Glenn,

I would recommend modifying the URLs in the links of the articles and the catalog items.

Unless it was intentional, you don't have to specify the portal's suffix in the URL.

e.g. the URL can be something like ?id=kb_article&sysparm_article=KB0000028 which would open the article in the user's current portal. Which means, if the user opens the link in ESC, it will stay in ESC. If it was in the mobile app, it will be in MESP.

Unless there are lot of places to update, I highly recommend the above solution. If not, you may be able to use some custom UI Script to detect the user's device and re-direct to the appropriate portal but this would add lot of customisation and effort.

Cheers

[Matthew Glenn]

Hey James,

Appreciate the response. I was not aware that not assigning a portal would inherently open the link in the currently portal. I didn't even think to test that. I just tested your suggestion and it works perfectly.

This definitely makes this easier and gives me a new trick to show the folks building our KBs and cat items.

Thank you very much!