Retire a knowledge article

  • Release version: Zurich
  • Updated July 31, 2025
  • 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 retirement workflow. Retired articles remain viewable by these roles but are no longer searchable on the Knowledge homepage or portal. This process ensures proper management and control over knowledge content lifecycle.

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    Key Features

    • Retirement Workflow: Similar to the publishing workflow, this allows configuration of approval and review steps before an article is retired.
    • Roles Allowed to Retire: Only knowledge administrators, knowledge managers, and the latest publisher of a versioned article can initiate retirement (not available to kcscandidate or kcscontributor roles).
    • Approval Process: If retirement requires approval, the article enters a pending approval state. Approval finalizes retirement; rejection cancels it.
    • Article Number Retention: Retired article numbers cannot be reused.
    • Replacement Articles: A replacement article can be specified during retirement. When users access the retired article, they are redirected to the replacement with an informative message. Without a replacement, users see a "Knowledge record not found" message.
    • Translation Handling: Retiring a parent article does not automatically retire its translated child articles.
    • System Property: The feature to enable article replacement on retire is controlled by the glide.knowman.enablearticlereplacementonretire system property, which is true by default for new users and can be manually enabled for existing/upgraded users.
    • Workspace Differences: The retire with replacement feature is not supported in the classic workspace; retirement there simply retires the article without replacement.
    • HTTP Codes: Articles retired with replacements return a 301 redirect; without replacements, a 404 error is returned.

    Additional Actions

    • Viewing Retired Articles: Only administrators and knowledge administrators can view retired articles.
    • Republishing Retired Articles: Administrators can republish retired articles if needed.
    • Deleting Articles: Administrators can delete published knowledge articles via the Delete action on the article record. If the Delete button is not visible, it can be found under the more actions menu.

    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.