Retire a knowledge article

  • Release version: Yokohama
  • Updated January 30, 2025
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Retire a knowledge article

    This feature allows knowledge base owners, managers, and administrators to retire knowledge articles through a defined retirement workflow. Retired articles remain viewable by knowledge base owners and managers but are excluded from search results on the Knowledge homepage and portal, helping maintain current and relevant content.

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    Retirement Process and Permissions

    • Retirement is initiated by selecting the Retire option on an article, which triggers an associated workflow similar to publishing workflows.
    • Only knowledge administrators, knowledge managers, and the latest publisher of a versioned article can retire an article; this is not available for kcscandidate or kcscontributor roles.
    • If approval is required, the article enters a pending approval state until approved or rejected, with the workflow completing or canceling accordingly.
    • The article number of retired articles is permanently unavailable for reuse.

    Article Visibility and Management After Retirement

    • Only administrators and knowledge administrators can view retired articles.
    • Retired articles can be republished by administrators or knowledge administrators if needed.
    • Retiring a parent article does not automatically retire its translated child articles; translations must be managed separately.

    Replacement Articles

    • A replacement article can be specified when retiring an article, enabling automatic redirection from the retired article to the replacement.
    • Users accessing a retired article with a replacement are redirected with a message indicating the replacement article reference.
    • If no replacement is provided, the system displays a "Knowledge record not found" message.
    • The replacement feature is not supported in classic workspace.
    • The system property glide.knowman.enablearticlereplacementonretire controls this functionality and is enabled by default for new users; existing users may need to enable it manually.
    • Redirects with replacement return HTTP status code 301; without replacement, a 404 code is returned.
    • In classic workspace, retiring an article does not support replacement regardless of the system property setting.

    Deleting Knowledge Articles

    Users with the admin role can delete published knowledge articles by selecting the Delete option on the article record. If the Delete button is hidden, it can be accessed via 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.