KCS status for knowledge articles.

[Sarah Lybro]

We are using KCS state for knowledge articles, but this is a customization. Does anyone use any out of the box functionality that meets the requirements for KCS status?

[thomashansson]

I don´t have an answer but I wonder how ServiceNow CSM could get KCS verified without having the KCS article states? Maybe the article states are not mandatory for verification?

WIP - Work in Progress

Not Validated

Validated

Archived

[Paul Curwen]

Good point but you can easily map that to:

Draft : Work in Progress

Review : Not Validated

Published: Validated

It would be relatively easy to amend one of the OOTB KB workflows just to amend the states as above, but you are right it should be easier than this, and such a workflow should have been provided along with the appropriate Candidate, Contributer, Publisher roles restricting what an individual can do etc At the moment (as of London) it's qute a botch job in my opinion, hopefully it will improve in the future. 

[thomashansson]

I´m thinking about that mapping and also to make article confidence visible in contextual search. I think that´s needed to make not validated and validated useful for knowledge workers.

I have read the verified v6 selfassess worksheet for CSM. It´s on HI.

Functional requirement

"The system shall support content being in a minimum of four article confidence levels:
Work In Progress
Not Validated
Validated
Archive

Native product capability

The Confidence field doesn't exist OOTB as part of the article form. However, each customer can add this field to their article template and define the values as required.

Mechanism for config

"Customer can add the Confidance field to the article form and define the values:

Work In Progress
Not Validated
Validated
Archive

[Mike Van Vooren]

Thomas,

That Self-Assessment worksheet was certainly helpful for some of this stuff.  How do you plan to relate the existing "Workflow" states of Draft, Published, and Retired with these separate Confidence Levels?  We were considering an association like this:

     - WIP with Draft (not searchable or usable)

     - Not Validated and Validated with Published (searchable and usable by internal IT only)

     - Archive with Retired (not searchable or usable)

But the KCS Principles say that WIP articles should be searchable and usable as well.  We weren't sure if there was a place for the WIP Confidence Level to also be in the Published workflow while others remained in the Draft workflow.  But at that point, should we just have that WIP be moved to Not Validated?

We are currently on Kingston using a 3rd party plugin to give us our KCS functionality.  We are in the process of dumping that later this year when we upgrade the platform to Madrid and are looking to enable the OOB Advanced KM features.  These Confidence Levels are something we have to factor in as well.