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?

[Sarah Lybro]

The OOTB KB Workflow does not support the KCS State purpose in my opinion.

Thus our ServiceNow admins have arranged  separate field for this.

The fact that a tool is KCS verified, does unfortunately not mean that the provider have in depth knowledge around the methodology. 

[nlofgren]

I agree that the OOB workflow does not support KCS.

I have been trying to figure this out for a while now, and I think the closest it gets is if the KB is set to approval publish or there are two KBs: One for not validated content, and one for validated content

Option 1: One KB set to approval publish

• Articles in DRAFT state = KCS Work in Progress (WIP) state
• Articles in REVIEW state = KCS Not Validated state
• Articles in PUBLISH state = KCS Validated state

Note that with this option, the search would have to be configured to include articles in DRAFT and REVIEW

Option 2: Two KBs, one for Not Validated Content, and one for Validated Content

• KB for Not Validated Content
• • Set to Instant Publish; 'can read' and 'can contribute' allow everyone
    
  • Articles in DRAFT state = KCS Work in Progress (WIP) state
  • Articles in PUBLISH state = KCS Not Validated state

• KB for Validated Content
• • Set to Instant Publish; 'can read' allows everyone, and 'can contribute' allows only Publishers
    
  • Articles in PUBLISH state = KCS Validated state

Maybe there is a better way? I'm all ears!

[Mike Van Vooren]

Thanks for sharing.  So do you ultimately associate the Workflow states to these separate Confidence Levels then?  And what have you guys done with the Work In Progress level?  Do you have that associated with Draft or Published?  I know the KCS principles want us to have WIP articles Published and searchable, but we are leaning towards keeping them in Draft state and force the Author or a KCS2 to review and Publish it to Not Validated level.

[Sarah Lybro]

We use instant publish.

Only KB articles in the workflow Published show up in search results, and thus it is only for published articles the KCS status is useful for us. A KB article in workflow Publish can hold any of the KCS statuses WIP, Not Validated or Validated.

Anyone can change the KCS status to Validated. Most commonly this is done by the individual that resolves the related incident. Then the steps for resolution is documented in the KB article and status is changed.

//Sarah 🙂

[thomashansson]

Sarah, would you like to show a screen dump of how your KCS status fields looks in ServiceNow? It would be helpful for my understanding of this solution.