Knowledge article templates

Release version: Zurich

Updated July 31, 2025

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Summary of Knowledge article templates

Knowledge article templates in ServiceNow provide a consistent structure for creating knowledge articles by using pre-defined or customized fields arranged in a specific order. These templates help streamline article creation and maintain uniformity across the knowledge base.

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Roles involved include:

Knowledge Administrator (knowledgeadmin): Creates, customizes, activates, or deactivates article templates.
Security Administrator (securityadmin): Configures field-level security within templates to control visibility for specific users.
Author: Creates articles by selecting from pre-defined or custom templates.

Key Features

Pre-defined Templates: Standard templates like How To, What Is, FAQ, and KCS Article are provided. These are inactive by default and must be activated to be used.
Template Association: Templates are linked to knowledge bases. Only active templates associated with a knowledge base are visible for article creation.
Template Storage: Template structure is stored in kbarticletemplate, and individual fields are stored in kbarticletemplatedefinition.
Field Examples: Different templates have specific fields; for example, the FAQ template includes Question and Answer fields, while the KCS Article template includes Issue, Environment, Cause, and Resolution fields.
Activation: The Knowledge Article Templates feature is enabled with the Knowledge Management Advanced plugin (com.snc.knowledgeadvanced). Once enabled, authors can select templates when creating articles.
Deactivation: Templates cannot be deleted due to underlying data table dependencies, but can be deactivated by unchecking the Active field on the Article Template form. The Standard template remains always active and cannot be deactivated.

Key Outcomes

Consistent and structured knowledge articles across your ServiceNow knowledge bases.
Controlled visibility of template fields through field-level security, ensuring relevant users see appropriate information.
Flexibility for knowledge administrators to manage templates to suit organizational needs without losing existing data.
Seamless upgrade experience where existing articles adopt the standard template of the newer version automatically.
Improved authoring experience by selecting from relevant templates aligned with article types.

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.