Article versioning

  • Release version: Yokohama
  • Updated January 30, 2025
  • 1 minute to read

    • Use the Knowledge Management article versioning feature to create and maintain multiple versions of a knowledge article.

    Knowledge contributors can create a new version of a knowledge article from an existing published version. This existing version can be either the latest published version or an older outdated version. All changes are stored in the new version of the article and the information in the existing article remains the same.

    If you import published knowledge articles from a ServiceNow instance that does not support article versioning, you must run the Initialize Versions on Articles fix script to enable article checkout and editing.

    With the article versioning feature, a knowledge user can:
    • Check out a published article and create another version.
      Note:
      Only an author (who checks out an article for revision), knowledge base owner, and user with knowledge_admin role can edit an article in the draft state.
    • Select a previously published (outdated) version of an article and make it current.
    • Recall an article that is being reviewed or scheduled for publication.
    • Retire the latest published version of an article.
    Note:
    Only an author (who checks out an article for revision), knowledge base owner, and user with knowledge_admin role can edit an article in the draft state.

    To track the different revisions, the article versioning feature introduces version numbering. For more information, see Knowledge article version numbers

    With the article versioning feature, the knowledge article number also includes the version number. All references to knowledge articles use this number format. For example, KB0010003 v2.0. To access all the versions of knowledge article, navigate to All > Knowledge > Articles > All and open article with multiple versions. In the Related list, you can access all the versions.
    Figure 1. Versioning control
    multiple versions of article

    Define minor fields so users can make some edits without triggering a new version. First, set the glide.knowman.versioning.enable_minor_edits property to true. Then, in the glide.knowman.versioning.minor_edit_fields property, specify the fields to define as minor. For example, set Valid To and Meta as fields that can be edited without creating a new version.

    Activation information

    The article versioning feature requires the Knowledge Management Advanced plugin (com.snc.knowledge_advanced) to be activated and the glide.knowman.versioning.enabled property to be set to true (default value). For more information, see Activate the Knowledge Management Advanced plugin and Article versioning properties.