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on 06-11-2020 07:51 AM - edited on 11-02-2023 08:28 AM by Ashley Snyder
The ServiceNow® Knowledge Management (KM) application enables the sharing of information in knowledge bases.
Knowledge bases contain articles that provide users with information such as self-help, troubleshooting, and task resolution. You can check out the FAQ on the following aspects of Knowledge Management to help use the application efficiently.
Administrators can control access to knowledge bases and knowledge articles by defining user criteria based on role, department, group, location, or company.
For example, create a North America IT user criteria matching users who are both in the IT team and based in North America. Then apply this record to the IT Service Desk knowledge base, so only users matching the North America IT user criteria can access articles within the IT Service Desk knowledge base.
The Support article (KB0550924) provides recommendations and example use cases.
At the knowledge base level, you can assign user criteria to control contribute and read access, where:
For more information, see Managing access to knowledge bases and knowledge articles.
The following GIF shows the Can Read, Can Contribute, Cannot Read, and Cannot Contribute user criteria for the IT Service Desk knowledge base.
At the knowledge article level, you can assign user criteria to control read access, where read access determines the ability to view the knowledge article. As an administrator, you can also configure the glide.knowman.apply_article_read_criteria property to secure knowledge articles from knowledge contributors not explicitly authorized through Can Read and Cannot Read user criteria.
Note: If the Can Read and Cannot Read fields aren't visible, configure the Knowledge form to display them. For more information, see Configuring the form layout.
You can manage user access to a knowledge base or a knowledge article using user criteria diagnostics. For more information, see User criteria diagnostics for Knowledge Management.
Alena can get access to the knowledge base if:
Click the IT knowledge base link and provide access by adding Alena to a user criteria for this knowledge base.
All existing articles are updated to version 1.0. You can continue editing the existing article by checking out and editing the latest published version.
The following information or metadata is carried over when the version of an article is changed:
The fields are included in the glide.knowman.versioning.minor_edit_fields property. The default field is the Valid to field. Admins can add more fields to the property as needed.
Note: To edit a published article without having to create a new version, make sure the glide.knowman.versioning.enable_minor_edits property is enabled.
You can select and compare two versions of a knowledge article. For more information, see Compare two versions of an article, this will show you how to compare in the Classic Environment. You can also compare versions in a workspace by following this product documentation (valid for both Configurable and Agent Workspace). The workspace UI will show a side-by-side format and highlight differences.
If the article versioning feature is enabled and a knowledge article is already checked out by the knowledge contributor of the article, a knowledge author can't edit the article. As a knowledge author, you can edit the article only after a knowledge contributor completes editing and then publishing the article. For more information, see Edit a knowledge article.
The following table shows the requirements for enabling a feature.
Feature | Requirements |
Feedback management |
Enable the glide.knowman.feedback.enable_actionable_feedback_for_helpful property. |
Knowledge subscription |
Activate the Knowledge Management Advanced plugin (com.snc.knowledge_advanced). Enable the glide.knowman.enable_km_subscriptionproperty. |
Related articles | Activate the Predictive Intelligence for Knowledge Management plugin (com.snc.knowledge_ml). |
Verify that the knowledge bases are associated with the portal. Portals restrict articles based on the knowledge bases associated with the portal record. For more information, see Configure knowledge bases for a portal.
Yes, the feedback tasks for flagged articles are integrated with notifications. The notifications are sent to the user who flagged a knowledge article either when the state of a feedback task changes or if there are any comments added to the task.
Yes, we have reports to track feedback tasks on our dashboards. Feedback task assignees will have modules in the All menu to track their assigned feedback tasks. You can track the progress on a feedback task and view the duration of time spent in each state. See this product documentation for more information.
If your administrator hasn’t configured the sn_km_word.glide.knowman.word.xframe property correctly, the Knowledge Management Add-in for Microsoft Word fails to load in the Word document.
For more information about resolving such errors, see the Knowledge Word Office Manifest fails validation [KB0860916] article in the Now Support knowledge base.
If the article content does not appear in the Document pane and the editing options are disabled, you might need to reload the Knowledge Management-Add-in for Microsoft Word by clearing or refreshing your browser cache memory. If the issue persists, contact the Customer Service and Support team for further help.
The videos don't appear because Document Viewer used by the Knowledge Management - Add-in for Microsoft Word to convert a Word document to HTML doesn't support videos. For more information, see Document Viewer.
The Attachment link option applies to knowledge article links accessed from the search results only. Therefore, you cannot download attachments of a knowledge article when the article is embedded as a link in another knowledge article. For more information, see Create a knowledge article in Agent Workspace. This product documentation applies to configure workspaces as well.
One probable cause for search slowing down is the size and number of article attachments. The search index includes attachments; and therefore, the size and number of knowledge article attachments might slow down the search results for knowledge articles. For a faster search results display, set the value of the glide.knowman.search.attachment system property to Do not show attachment or Show only link for attachment. For more information, see Knowledge Management properties.
Yes, by a combination of the Translation management and Dynamic Translation features. You must activate both features. For more information, see Translation management and Activate Dynamic Translation.
Yes, you must have the article versioning feature enabled to use translation management. To enable the article versioning feature, ensure the glide.knowman.versioning.enabled property is enabled. This property is available when your administrator activates the Knowledge Management Advanced plugin
(com.snc.knowledge_advanced).
The possible reason could be that the default article validity value is modified or blank. To show the accurate valid to date for an article, you need to set the default value of the dictionary entry of kb_knowledge.valid_to column to javascript: current.kb_knowledge_base ? new global.KBCommon().getDefaultValidToDateFromCurrentDate(current.kb_knowledge_base) : '';.
If the system date format or user preferences is set to use yy year format, you might face issues when the Valid to date is set to the default date. You can contact your administrator or modify the user preferences to use a date format with the yyyy year format.
For more information, see Global date and time field format and Personalize the system date format.
The article visibility in search relies on various parameters like the article state, access criteria, validity, and Knowledge Management properties.
The view count in the Knowledge [kb_knowledge] table is controlled by the Number of days (integer, default 30) used when summing article views property (glide.knowman.view_age.days). The default value for this property is set to 30, meaning only views in the last 30 days will be considered. Therefore, there's a discrepancy between the view count of both the tables. For more information about the glide.knowman.view_age.days property, see Knowledge Management properties.
The Knowledge Management V3 UI or $knowledge.do is not available for customization. Use the Knowledge Management Service Portal for an easily configurable user experience. For more information on Knowledge Management V3 homepage, see Knowledge Management v3 homepage.
The most probable reasons are:
The glide.knowman.apply_article_read_criteria property determines read access to an article for a user with contribute access to a knowledge base. To enable read access at the article level, your administrator must enable the glide.knowman.apply_article_read_criteria property to override contribute access at the knowledge base level. For more information, see the Determining contribute access to a knowledge base and its articles using user criteria section in Managing access to knowledge bases and knowledge articles.
You can set up and test the Self-Service Analytics/deflection configuration for any type of task in the context of a user table, such as User [sys_user], Contact [customer_contact], and Consumer [csm_consumer]. For more information, see theSelf-Service Analytics Implementation Guide for Incidentscommunity article.
Currently, you can associate only one activity context with a table in the Self-Service Analytics/deflection configuration.
Great article
But is there any documentation about the glide.knowman.apply_article_read_criteria ?
It will be available in Paris documentation as the property was introduced in Paris.
Very helpful. I was initially looking for a way to set an article to "featured" on the portal.
Click this link for doc about that property
For documentation, you can check the ServiceNow Doc Site: https://docs.servicenow.com/
Very helpful article!
I have included it in my "Knowledge Sources To Go"
THANK YOU for this!!! My In house team (and frankly myself) have NEVER understood the purpose and/or advantages of the Knowledge Management Service Portal. This spells out a lot of good.
I'm still a bit grey as to how we should get "from here to there", but we need to evaluate how our system has been configured and decide the best route. We desperately need to empower ALL Knowledge Searchers with the KCS and full-power KB functionality so self help users aren't so isolated from the ITIL KB functionality.
Is it possible to use AI search on Knowledge Management Service Portal or is AI search only for Service Portal in Quebec?
You will need to be in the Quebec release to utilize AI search functionalities in the platform.
Hi Thomas,
AI Search can be configured on any Service portal including Knowledge Management Service Portal. We have not shipped any default configuration for KM Service Portal.
I keep seeing this:
"The Knowledge Management Service Portal is an end user-facing portal instead of the classic Knowledge Management v3 homepage."
What I NEED to know is... if I setup the new, does it remove the old? if I'm in the Native UI (Fulfiller side for itil users) and click Knowledge Homepage, will it take me to the Knowledge Management Service Portal?
Or
As discussed in the Knowledge Management Service Portal properties topic, the sn_km_portal.glide.knowman.serviceportal.enable_redirect property when set to true, users navigating to the listed Knowledge Management v2 or v3 pages - kb_home, kb_find, kb_view_customer, kb_list, kb_tree, $knowledge - will be redirected to the equivalent Knowledge Management Service Portal UI.
For searches, any searches in native UI open in the native view of the article, searches in workspace open in workspace view, and searches in portal open in the portal view.
Thank you for your reply. I'm still missing something but this is not the right venue to continue the discussion. I'll try another avenue.
hi Sweta,
I noticed that your links to Product Docs are intuitively going to the "latest content", whenever I add a link to my internal docs it saves the specific release in the URL.... I have seen those not work if the release is no longer visible on product docs and take me nowhere. Can you advise how you did this magic? here is one example from your content.... when I click it it redirected me to Tokyo and the URL updated as it took me there.
https://docs.servicenow.com/csh?topicname=make-knowledge-visible-to-public&version=latest
Thanks in advance,
Valerie
Great article and thanks you. I have an existing KM setup in ServiceNow and it is really rubbish (it was an afterthought when we went live) and I would like to use the 'Guided Setup' to start again. If I do that will it delete all of the existing Knowledge Articles?
Thanks for replying
How do you manage governance and auditing within ServiceNow with Tokyo, given then edit text option has been removed from Out of the Box?
Hello!
How do you update who can retire and article?
Also is there a way to adjust the wildcard settings in search portal to allow for partial text search of words?
This article is being updated August-September 2023 so old information relating to releases prior to San Diego may be removed and comments may be reflecting older content. This article will continue to receive updates.