Knowledge article templates

  • Release version: Australia
  • Updated March 12, 2026
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Knowledge Article Templates

    Knowledge article templates provide a structured format for creating consistent knowledge articles within ServiceNow. As a knowledge administrator, you can create, customize, and manage these templates, while security administrators can control field visibility. Authors utilize these templates to streamline article creation.

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    Key Features

    • Pre-defined Templates: Use standard templates or specific ones like How To, What Is, FAQ, and KCS. All pre-defined templates are inactive by default until activated.
    • Activation and Management: Knowledge administrators can activate templates through the Knowledge > Administration > Article Templates menu. Only active templates linked to knowledge bases are visible for use.
    • Field-Level Security: Security administrators can set visibility for specific fields in templates, ensuring sensitive information is only accessible to authorized users.
    • Non-deletable Templates: Article templates cannot be deleted due to their association with child tables. Instead, they can be deactivated by unchecking the Active box.

    Key Outcomes

    By utilizing knowledge article templates, ServiceNow customers can ensure a consistent format for knowledge sharing, improve the efficiency of article creation, and enhance the overall management of knowledge articles. This leads to better organization and accessibility of information within the organization.

    Article templates have pre-defined fields structured in a specific order. These templates help create a consistent structure for knowledge articles.

    Using the Knowledge Article Templates feature, as a knowledge administrator (a user with knowledge_admin role), you can create article templates, add or customize fields in a template, and activate or deactivate a template.

    As a security administrator (a user with security_admin role), you can configure field-level security in any template to make it visible to specific users.

    As an author, you can create articles using pre-defined article templates or any newly created article templates.

    Pre-defined knowledge article templates

    Use either the standard template or one of the pre-defined How To, What Is, FAQ or KCS article templates.

    Note:

    When you upgrade Knowledge Management to Kingston or later releases, all the existing articles from the earlier version automatically use the standard template of the upgraded version. For example, if you upgrade Knowledge Management from Jakarta to Kingston, all existing articles use the standard template available in the Kingston version.

    All pre-defined templates are inactive by default. If you do not activate a template, the articles automatically use the standard template. As a knowledge admin, you can activate a template by navigating to Knowledge > Administration > Article Templates. Then in the article template list, set the Active field to true for one or more templates you would like to activate.

    Templates are associated with knowledge bases. Only templates which are active and associated with a knowledge base are shown.

    The template structure is stored in kb_article_template while the fields for each template are stored in kb_article_template_definition. For creating and manipulating templates navigate to Knowledge > Administration > Article Templates.

    The table below lists the fields available in each template and the name of the template table.

    Table 1. Pre-defined knowledge article templates
    Template name Template fields Maps to table SEO Description Tag
    FAQ
    • Question
    • Answer
    		 FAQ [kb_template_faq] Question
    How To
    • Introduction
    • Instructions
    		 How To [kb_template_how_to] Introduction
    What Is
    • Introduction
    • Explanation
    		 What Is [kb_template_what_is] Introduction
    KCS Article
    • Issue
    • Environment
    • Cause
    • Resolution
    		 KCS Article [kb_template_kcs_article] Issue
    Standard Text kb_knowledge Text

    Activating knowledge article templates

    The Knowledge Article Templates feature is activated with the Knowledge Management Advanced (com.snc.knowledge_advanced) plugin. After the feature is activated, when creating an article, option to choose a template for the article appears. For details, see Activate the Knowledge Management Advanced plugin.

    Deactivating knowledge article templates

    You cannot delete an article template because article templates have an associated child table. Deleting a template would also require deleting the child table. Due to the limitations on dropping tables, article templates and template columns are explicitly made non-deletable. Instead, you can disable the Knowledge Article Templates feature by clearing the Active check box on the Article Template form.

    Note:
    The Standard template is available by default and can’t be made inactive.