Ownership groups

  • Release version: Washingtondc
  • Updated February 1, 2024
  • 2 minutes to read
    • Summarize
    Summarized using AI
    This content was generated using new OpenAI-powered functionality. Results are provided on an as is basis and are not guaranteed to be accurate or complete.

    Summary of Ownership groups

    Ownership groups allow ServiceNow customers to manage knowledge articles by assigning a group of members and a manager responsible for article quality, approvals, and feedback resolution. This shift enables more collaborative maintenance of knowledge articles rather than relying on a single individual.

    Show full answer Show less

    Key Features

    • Ownership Group Assignment: Knowledge articles can be associated with ownership groups, granting only group members the ability to edit, approve, publish, and retire the articles.
    • Access Control: Non-members cannot contribute to articles even if they have access to the knowledge base.
    • Configuration Requirement: To add the Ownership Group field to knowledge articles, configure the Knowledge form during article creation or editing.
    • Activation: Enable ownership groups by activating the glide.knowman.ownershipgroup.enabled property, available through the Knowledge Management Advanced plugin, which is disabled by default.
    • Contribution Access: Authors or revisers lose contribution access to published articles unless the glide.knowman.ownershipgroup.override property is set to true.
    • Self-Approval Feature: Ownership group members can approve their self-authored articles unless the glide.knowman.ownershipgroup.allowselfapproval property is set to false.

    Key Outcomes

    By implementing ownership groups, ServiceNow customers can enhance the quality and management of knowledge articles, streamline the approval process, and ensure effective feedback resolution. Proper configuration is essential to maintain control over article access and approval rights, ultimately leading to improved knowledge management practices.

    Configure ownership groups and associate them with knowledge articles to maintain article quality, manage approvals, and for timely resolution of feedback.

    For the ease of maintenance of knowledge articles, you can assign an ownership group to a knowledge article and shift the ownership of an article from a single person to a group. An ownership group consists of a group of members and a manager who are responsible for knowledge articles. Responsibilities include: approving knowledge articles, performing AQI checks to ensuring article quality, and managing feedback tasks for knowledge articles.

    When a knowledge article is assigned to an ownership group:
    • Only ownership group members have contribute access to the article even if they don't have contribute access to the knowledge base of the article. They can edit, approve, publish, and retire the knowledge article with which they are associated.
    • Users who aren't a member of the ownership group can't contribute to the article even if they have contribute access to the knowledge base of the article.

    When Create a knowledge article from an incident in ITSM Agent Workspace or editing a knowledge article, you may need to configure the Knowledge form to add the Ownership Group field.

    Activation information

    To enable the use of ownership groups, enable the glide.knowman.ownership_group.enabled property. This property is available when the Knowledge Management Advanced plugin (com.snc.knowledge_advanced) is activated. By default, the property is disabled.
    Note:
    If you use ownership groups, try not to disable the glide.knowman.ownership_group.enabled property later. If you must disable the property later, ensure that you manually reassign all knowledge articles associated with any ownership group, close all article approvals sent to ownership groups, and resolve all open feedback tasks assigned to ownership groups.

    Contribute access to published articles

    If an ownership group is associated with a knowledge article, the author or reviser of the article can't contribute to the article after the article is published. You can override this behavior by enabling the glide.knowman.ownership_group.override property. When the property is set to true, the authors or revisers of knowledge articles associated with ownership groups retain contribute access to their published articles. By default, the property is set to false.

    Approval of self-authored articles for ownership group members

    With an ownership group associated with a knowledge article, ownership group members can approve self-authored articles for publication. You can override this behavior by disabling the glide.knowman.ownership_group.allow_self_approval property. By default, the property is set to true. When the property is set to false, ownership group members can't approve self-authored knowledge articles.