Knowledge Management & NowAssist

[CedricThomas]

Issue:

• We have three knowledge bases: 'All Employees,' 'Domestic Bargained,' and 'Domestic Management.' The 'All Employees' knowledge base is accessible to all employees, including those based internationally. The 'Domestic Bargained' knowledge base is available to all domestic employees, while the 'Domestic Management' knowledge base is accessible only to domestic management employees.

• NowAssist leverages the 'Can Read' field at the article level to further restrict and personalize access beyond what is granted at the knowledge base level, ensuring its AI responses are tailored to each user's permissions. If a user attempts to access an article without sufficient privileges, an orange banner appears with the error message: 'You do not have sufficient privileges to access this knowledge item

Solution Needed:

• We want to maintain our user criteria at the knowledge base level, allowing NowAssist to personalize its responses while still permitting users to view the articles.

User Experience:

Since NowAssist applies additional restrictions at the article level, some users encounter an unauthorized access message when trying to view certain knowledge articles. We believe this results in a poor user experience. Without NowAssist, access is managed at the knowledge base level, which avoids this issue.

[qprinsloo]

Is this possibly an issue with your knowledge base / portal setup and the link then presented by Now Assist forces the portal view? Take a look at KB0860116 and see if it helps. The ability to view a knowledge article (including via links presented via Now Assist) should inherit the permissions from the knowledge base unless those are explicitly set at the knowledge article level. If set at the article level, it will override what is set at the base level. 

https://support.servicenow.com/kb?id=kb_article_view&sysparm_article=KB0860116

[CedricThomas]

I’m going to review your response, but I want to clarify one point I didn’t mention earlier: we’re using the Employee Center, not Service Portal. Am I understanding correctly that NowAssist should inherit the User Criteria we’ve set at the 'Can Read' level on the knowledge base?

[qprinsloo]

That is correct, Now Assist search and answers will honor the user criteria set at the knowledge base level in both the 'can read' and 'cannot read' lists. However, if this is explicitly set at the knowledge article level, then those will supersede the knowledge base permissions.