Set service portal default KB URL to permalink

[Sean Dee]

With the upgrade to New York, ServiceNow have finally given us the ability to copy permalinks from the Service Portal view of a knowledge article. This means we can link to the KB number, rather than sys_id, which means those of us who have advanced knowledge turned on have a URL that can be saved by customers which will always take them to the latest version. (copying the URL of a previous version causes them to always go to that older article)

My question is: can we take this a step further? Really, customers who visit a service portal aren't likely to be interested in previous versions. Instead of hiding this great URL structure behind a 'copy permalink' option, is it possible to configure the portal to use this permalink whenever it loads an article from the search or category browsing?

[John Longhitano]

Yes it's possible but my guess is you'd have to currently clone the widget that opens the KBs to modify the structure of the URL.  Looks like this is where it lives.

[Sarup Paul]

Unfortunately the architecture of Service Portal may not allow us to do this. Using the KB ID instead of Sys-id may break some features, especially around Dynamic Titles and SEO metadata.

We will explore and get back to you. 

[Sean Dee]

I've also raised an Idea around the back button functionality and permalinks. If the back button functionality couldn't be resolved, this idea would be a disaster, as permalinks are horrid from a user experience perspective (even my mum and dad know about 'back')