Enhanced Html and CSS for Knowledge Article

Maat · ‎05-03-2019

Hello,

I have a lot of word docs to set as Knowledge articles into service now.

They have advanced layout i cannot repoduce. As a wordpress user, it would be no problem using a good html editor and custom CSS. And provide easily this kind of alert boxes :

But in service now, it's kind of limited.. Or even impossible. And that's a real issue for me, i need to be able to provide tools to have (more or less) the same layout in Service Now than word docs.

I have search about that here and using google, but unfortunately, there nothing possible "ootb". Except maybe, using external editor such as ultra-edit. But not sure it"s easy to link this kind of external product to Service Now.

If anyone has the same issues and some solutions, i am really very interested! Thanks in advance!

JulietChicago · ‎05-07-2019

HI,

We have the same issues. The native editor is not that great.

AmandaFullan · ‎05-07-2019

We have a similar problem with needing more complex options than are available through the OOB wysiwyg editor, particularly being able to use a CSS and collapsible content/accordions.

Our current workaround is we first create the HTML content in an external tool (we use Visual Studio Code). Then in ServiceNow KB tasks, we have a custom text/string field that let's us enter that HTML and bypass the OOB editor. We also have a custom CSS specific to knowledge articles that our solutions engineers upload for us as needed.

We've found that if we try to just paste the externally created code into the HTML view of the wysiwyg editor in ServiceNow, the tool tries to "help" and "fix" our HTML, which results in problems.

I admit that it is not a great workaround and results in quite a bit of extra work, but we've decided it's worth the extra work to make our content optimal for our users. If you'd like the technical info on the customization, I could reach out to our solution engineering team for more details.

Maat · ‎05-09-2019

Hello,

Sounds a good workaround..

Do you have more details about the way you bypass OOTB editor?

And about the CSS, did you use the standard one or a specific one?

Lorenzo Stermie · ‎05-07-2019

Hello Maat,

If your company has an online document editor (like O265, or Google Docs) you can host your file there (make sure it has the correct permissions) and embed it in your KB with an iFrame:

Example:

Here you would only be limited by what the online viewer can do (as far as the functionalities of the document go)

NOTE: you will have to make sure that the HTML code "iframe" is allowed on your instance (check the HTML sanitizer), also evaluate any possible security concerns as this opens the possibility of embedding any web page in to your knowledge base.

For info on how to configure the HTML sanitizer see: https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/london-platform-administration/page/administer/security/task/t_Co...

Hope this helps.