Knowledge workflows
Summarize
Summary of Knowledge workflows
Knowledge workflows in ServiceNow control the publishing and retirement processes of knowledge articles within specific knowledge bases. Each knowledge base can have its own workflow, either using default workflows or custom ones tailored to different knowledge types. These workflows manage article states such as Draft, In Review, Published, Scheduled for publish, and Retired.
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Key Features
- Default Workflows:
- Knowledge - Approval Publish: Requests approval from knowledge base managers or ownership group members before publishing. Articles remain in “In Review” until approved, then move to “Published” or “Scheduled” if publishing is delayed. Rejected articles revert to “Draft.”
- Knowledge - Approval Retire: Requests approval before retiring an article. If rejected, the article stays published.
- Knowledge - Instant Publish: Publishes a draft article immediately without approval, or at a scheduled time.
- Knowledge - Instant Retire: Retires a published article immediately without approval.
- Knowledge - Publish Knowledge and Knowledge - Retire Knowledge: Subflows used for moving articles between published and retired states, useful when designing custom workflows.
- Approval Configuration: The getApprovers() function in the KBWorkflow script include determines who can approve or reject articles.
- Email Notifications: When enabled, approvers and authors receive email notifications about approval requests and statuses. This is controlled by the
glide.knowman.enableapprovalnotificationproperty, which is enabled by default from the New York release onward. - Article and Translation Relationship: Articles and their translations have a parent-child relationship, but retiring a parent article does not automatically retire its translations.
- Access to Retired Articles: Only administrators and knowledge administrators can view and republish retired articles.
Practical Benefits
- Provides structured control over knowledge article lifecycle, ensuring quality through approval workflows.
- Allows customization of publishing and retirement processes to meet organizational needs.
- Enables timely communication via email notifications to keep authors and approvers informed.
- Supports immediate publishing or retiring when approvals are not required, speeding up content management.
- Helps manage translations independently from the parent articles for better localization control.
The publishing and retirement processes for a knowledge article are controlled by workflows defined for the knowledge base that the article belongs to.
You can assign different workflows to each Knowledge Base .
You can use one of the default workflows, or create your own workflows to define custom publishing and retirement processes for different types of knowledge.
For the workflows that require approval, you can configure which users can approve or reject by editing the getApprovers() function in the KBWorkflow script include.
| Workflow | Description |
|---|---|
| Knowledge - Approval Publish | Requests approval from a manager of the knowledge base. Articles in approval
are In Review state before moving to Published state once approved or to Scheduled
for publish if set to publish later. If the manager rejects the request, the
workflow is canceled and the article remains in Draft state. If ownership groups is enabled, email notifications with a link to the article are sent to the ownership group members for approval. If ownership groups is not enabled, email notifications with a link to the article are sent to knowledge base managers for approval. A notification is also sent to authors or revisers of articles to inform them that their article has been approved or rejected. To turn on approval email notifications, set the glide.knowman.enable_approval_notification property to true. Note: Only the active user receives the
notifications. |
| Knowledge - Approval Retire | Requests approval from a manager of the knowledge base before moving the
article to the retired state. The workflow is canceled and the article remains in
the published state if any manager rejects the request. If ownership groups is enabled, email notifications with a link to the article are sent to the ownership group members for approval. If ownership groups is not enabled, email notifications with a link to the article are sent to knowledge base managers for approval. |
| Knowledge - Instant Publish | Immediately publishes a draft article without requiring an approval, or publishes on the scheduled publish date if set to publish later. |
| Knowledge - Instant Retire | Immediately retires a published article without requiring an approval. |
| Knowledge - Publish Knowledge | A subflow that moves the knowledge article to the published state. You can use this subflow when defining your own workflow. |
| Knowledge - Retire Knowledge | A subflow that moves the knowledge article to the retired state. You can use this subflow when defining your own workflow. |
- 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.
Email notifications for approval workflows
- Notify approvers about knowledge articles submitted for their approvals.
- Notify authors about the approval status of their knowledge articles.