maja_jovanovic
ServiceNow Employee
ServiceNow Employee

Knowledge management has significantly changed in Fuji as we have gone from v2 to Knowledge v3. Some new features added in v3 include multiple knowledge bases, the ability to pin articles, and feature popular and most helpful content right on the front page. With all of the new UI features of v3 there have also been some changes made in the security functionality. If your user criteria is not configured properly in v3, you will find that non-admin users will not be able to see articles under specific topics and categories resulting in a "No items" found message.

 

Security in v3 allows access to articles managed with user criteria rather than roles and ACLs. New ACLs are introduced and existing ACLs on the Knowledge [kb_knowledge] table are maintained as well as customized ones. If you do not have high security enabled, you may notice differences in default behavior.

 

 

The v3 OOB Fuji read ACL on kb_knowledge table:

oob acl.jpg

 

The legacy OOB read ACL on kb_knowledge table:

old acl.jpg

 

Enable non admin users to view articles:

If your Fuji instance doesn't have the High Security Plugin activated, the legacy read ACL on kb_knowledge from above will be missing resulting in admin users being the only ones able to view articles under topics.

 

Here are one of ways to reproduce and to see if it affects you:

  1. Log into your instance as itil (non admin) user
  2. Go to the old homepage (kb_home) your_instance_name.service-now.com/kb_home.do
  3. Under Categories/Topics you will see "No Items" instead of actual articles listed

no items v3.jpg

 

You will need either to import the old OOB read ACL for kb_knowledge (attached here in this article) or you need to add it as admin:

 

Type: record

Operation: read

Name: kb_knowledge

Script: gs.hasRole("knowledge") || gs.hasRole(current.roles) || current.roles == "public" || current.roles == "";

Condition and Required roles should be empty.

 

For more information on this issues see ServiceNow KB: Upgrading to Fuji without high security prevents access to knowledge articles (KB0549...

 

Add the glide.ui.escape_text system property:

Another issue related to High Security Plugin being inactive on Fuji causing users not to see articles in the Knowledge Base, could be due to the glide.ui.escape_text being set to false. When the property "glide.ui.escape_text" is set to false, the kb_view displays message, "The content of elements must consist of well-formed character data or markup."

 

The system property glide.ui.escape_text is missing due to plugin not being active. Adding this property in the system properties and setting it to true will resolve the issue. The 'glide.ui.escape_text' system property will escape XML values at the parser level for the user interface. This will prevent cross site scripting attacks.

 

 

For more information see ServiceNow KB: PRB629756: Knowledge v3 search and search results do not render correctly when glide.... (This issue is fixed in Geneva)

 

Before considering to activate high security you need to read over the basics to get a full understanding of what it enables and possible risks.

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