Retire a knowledge article

  • Release version: Australia
  • Updated March 12, 2026
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Retire a knowledge article

    ServiceNow enables knowledge base owners, managers, and administrators to retire knowledge articles through a dedicated retirement workflow. Retiring an article removes it from search on the Knowledge homepage and portal, while still allowing certain roles to view the retired content. This process supports approval and review steps configured by administrators.

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    Retirement Workflow and Permissions

    • Retirement is initiated by selecting the Retire option when editing an article.
    • Only users with roles such as knowledge administrator, knowledge manager, or the latest publisher of a versioned article can retire articles (excluding KCS contributors and candidates).
    • If the article requires approval before retirement, it enters a pending approval state; approval completes retirement, rejection cancels it.
    • Retired article numbers cannot be reused.
    • Only administrators and knowledge administrators can view retired articles.

    Replacement Articles and Translations

    • Retiring an article can include specifying a replacement article; users accessing the retired article are redirected to the replacement with an informative message.
    • If no replacement exists, users see a "Knowledge record not found" message.
    • The replacement feature is not supported in classic workspace and must be enabled via the glide.knowman.enablearticlereplacementonretire system property for upgraded or existing users.
    • Retiring a parent article does not automatically retire its translated child articles.
    • Retirement with replacement returns a 301 redirect code; without replacement, it returns a 404 error code.

    Additional Actions and Notes

    • Administrators can republish retired articles if needed.
    • There are instant retire and approval retire workflows to suit different retirement processes.
    • Administrators can delete published knowledge articles using the Delete option on the article record; if not visible, it can be accessed via the more actions menu.
    • The retire action in classic workspace simply retires the article without providing replacement functionality, regardless of system property settings.

    Initiate the retirement workflow to retire a knowledge article. Knowledge base owners and managers can view articles after they are retired but cannot search for retired articles on the Knowledge homepage and portal.

    A knowledge article has an associated retirement workflow, similar to the publishing workflow. This allows administrators to configure these workflows, defining an approval and review process for retiring knowledge if appropriate.

    When editing an article, select Retire. This launches the retirement workflow associated with that article. Only knowledge administrator, knowledge manager, and the latest publisher of the versioned knowledge article (not available for kcs_candidate or kcs_contributor) can retire a knowledge article. For more information, see Retire a versioned article. If the article requires approval prior to retirement, the article goes to a pending approval state, and the workflow either finishes when approved or cancels if rejected by an approver. The article number associated with the retired article is not available for reuse. For information on the status of a knowledge article see Knowledge article states.

    Note:
    • Only administrators and knowledge administrators can view the retired knowledge articles. To reuse a retired article, administrators and knowledge administrators can republish the article. For more information, see Republish a retired article.
    • An article and its translations have a parent-child relationship. Retiring a parent article does not automatically retire all its translated child articles.
    You can provide a replacement article while retiring a knowledge article. When the retired article is accessed, the user is automatically redirected to the replacement article with the display message The article KBxxx is retired and has been replaced with the knowledge article KBxxx. If no replacement article is available, the page displays the message Knowledge record not found. The retire with replacement feature is not supported on classic workspace. By default, the glide.knowman.enable_article_replacement_on_retire system property is set to true for new users, to provide a replacement article for a retired article. Set the property to true manually so existing and upgraded users can view and use the feature.
    Note:
    • Article with replacement returns a 301 code.
    • Article without any replacement returns a 404 code.
    • The retire action on classic workspace will just retire the article and not provide a replacement irrespective of the setting of glide.knowman.enable_article_replacement_on_retire.

    Instant retire and Approval retire workflows

    Instant retire knowledge article workflow Approval retire knowledge article workflow

    Delete a knowledge article

    Users with the admin role can delete a published knowledge article. On an article record, select Delete. If the Delete button isn't displayed, select the more actions icon (More actions icon), and then select Delete.