ServiceNow or Sharepoint

[DaveThibode]

Hello everyone,

                We're still relatively new to ServiceNow and are working through a debate around where different types of documentation should live—specifically policies, procedures, training guides, and other reference materials. For example, if you have a 150-page training document with 45 separate screen shots, would you store it in ServiceNow or SharePoint?

One perspective is that maintaining large documents in ServiceNow can be more challenging, while uploading and managing the document in SharePoint is quick and straightforward. Our Support Desk Manager, who came from a large and mature ServiceNow environment, is strongly opposed to creating and maintaining very large knowledge articles within ServiceNow.

On the other hand, our ServiceNow account team and implementation partner recommend storing documentation in ServiceNow, citing the additional capabilities around knowledge management, governance, audience targeting, approvals, reporting, and content lifecycle management.

I've also looked at recommendations from Copilot and ChatGPT and found mixed opinions depending on the use case.

I'm curious how other organizations handle this. Specifically:

• Where do you store policies and procedures?
• Where do you store training materials and user guides?
• Do you maintain content in both platforms, and if so, how do you determine what belongs where?
• Have you established document size or content-type guidelines for ServiceNow Knowledge vs. SharePoint?

I'd appreciate hearing what has worked well (or not worked well) in your environment.

Thanks,

Dave

feel free to reach me direct. dave.thibodeau@growfinancial.org

[Tanushree Maiti]

Hi @DaveThibode 

You can leverage Policy management to maintain your policies.

Refer : A Practical Guide for GRC Leaders (Three Lines of Defense in Action)

Tutorial: How to prepare for implementation (Policy & Compliance and Risk Management) 

2023 Q3 GRC policy and redlining recommended practices

Q&A from Best Practices: Governance, Risk, and Compliance & Common Controls Hub Webinar

[Vikram Reddy · Accepted solution]

Hi @DaveThibode,

Verdict: the 150-page guide goes to SharePoint. Forcing screenshot-heavy manuals into kb_knowledge articles is where most orgs regret it. To your four questions:

• Policies and procedures: short, single-topic ones live as kb_knowledge articles for audience targeting, approvals and search. Anything that reads like a manual, PDF it and link out from a short article.
• Training materials and user guides: SharePoint, always. Screenshot-heavy step-by-steps age fast and are painful to maintain in the HTML field editor.
• Both platforms: yes, and the split isn't size, it's behavior. Needs a workflow, expiration date, or ownership approval? ServiceNow. Static reference someone downloads and reads offline? SharePoint, with a stub article pointing to it.
• Size guideline: we tell teams, if it needs a table of contents, it's not a knowledge article. That line ends most of these debates before they start.

One thing worth checking before you lock the policy: is Knowledge Management Advanced active on your instance? With glide.knowman.versioning.enabled on, every article revision keeps its own attachments in sys_attachment, so a 45-screenshot guide edited a few times a year quietly bloats storage and search. That's almost certainly what your Support Desk Manager ran into at their last shop, not a knock on ServiceNow itself.

Thank you,
Vikram Karety
Octigo Solutions INC