The way that knowledge articles are published or retired is determined by workflows. You assign workflows for knowledge bases, which then determine the workflow for the articles that belong to that knowledge base. You can assign different workflows to each knowledge base. ServiceNow provides default workflows, or you can create your own.
The workflows provided by ServiceNow are:
- Approval Publish " Requests approval from a manager of the knowledge base before moving the article to the published state. The workflow is canceled and the article remains in the draft state if any manager rejects the request.
- Approval Retire " Requests approval from a manager of the knowledge base before moving the article to the retired state. The workflow is canceled and the article remains in the published state if any manager rejects the request.
- Instant Publish " Immediately publishes a draft article without requiring an approval (the system default).
- Instant Retire " Immediately retires a published article without requiring an approval (the system default).
- Publish Knowledge " A subflow that moves the knowledge article to the published state. You can use this subflow when defining your own workflow.
- Retire Knowledge " A subflow that moves the knowledge article to the retired state. You can use this subflow when defining your own workflow.
Assigning and Administering Workflows
So, how does an article get a workflow assigned to it? You can assign the workflow when you create the knowledge base or change the setting later.
To change the knowledge base workflow:
- Navigate to Knowledge > Administration > Knowledge Bases.
- Click the name of the knowledge base whose workflow you want to assign.
- Assign the value of the Publish workflow field.
- Assign the value of the Retire workflow field.
- Click Update.
For the workflows that require approval, you configure which users can approve or reject by editing the getApprovers( ) function in the KBWorkflow script include.
Customizing Workflows
If the provided workflows don't exactly match your process, you can design custom workflows. The easiest way to do that is to copy the default workflow that best matches your process and modify that copy. You can then assign these workflows to new knowledge bases. For information about how to use the interface to quickly create or modify your workflow, see the Workflow Editor topic in the product documentation.
For More Information
- Knowledge workflows topic in the product documentation
- Some advice on crafting good knowledge workflow notifications in jeffblancato's answer to this question
- Workflow Resources comprehensive links page
- Step-by-step guide to Knowledge administration and usage post by saruppaul, which includes the Knowledge Management Knowledge16 comprehensive lab guide!
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