Knowledge workflows

  • Release version: Yokohama
  • Updated January 30, 2025
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Knowledge workflows

    Knowledge workflows in ServiceNow control the publishing and retirement processes of knowledge articles based on the knowledge base they belong to. Each knowledge base can have a distinct workflow, either using default ones or custom workflows tailored to specific publishing and retirement needs. Workflows that require approval allow configuration of approvers via thegetApprovers()function in theKBWorkflowscript include.

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    Default Knowledge Workflows

    • Knowledge - Approval Publish: Requires manager approval before publishing. Articles move from In Review to Published or Scheduled for Publish if approved; if rejected, they remain in Draft. Notifications are sent to ownership groups or knowledge base managers, and authors/revisers are informed of the approval outcome. Approval notifications can be enabled via the glide.knowman.enableapprovalnotification property.
    • Knowledge - Approval Retire: Requires manager approval before retiring an article. If rejected, the article stays published. Notifications are sent similarly to the publish approval workflow.
    • Knowledge - Instant Publish: Publishes draft articles immediately without approval or on a scheduled publish date.
    • Knowledge - Instant Retire: Retires published articles immediately without approval.
    • Knowledge - Publish Knowledge: A subflow to transition an article to the published state, usable in custom workflows.
    • Knowledge - Retire Knowledge: A subflow to transition an article to the retired state, usable in custom workflows.

    Additional Details

    • Only administrators and knowledge administrators can view retired articles and have the ability to republish them.
    • Retiring a parent article does not automatically retire its translated child articles, reflecting their parent-child relationship.

    Email Notifications for Approval Workflows

    Email notifications can be sent to approvers when articles require approval and to authors about approval status. This is controlled by the glide.knowman.enableapprovalnotification property, which is enabled by default starting with the New York release. Customers on earlier releases can enable this property manually. It is recommended to disable any custom approval notifications before enabling this setting to avoid duplicates.

    Practical Implications for ServiceNow Customers

    • Assign appropriate workflows per knowledge base to ensure effective governance of article lifecycle.
    • Use approval workflows to maintain content quality and control publishing and retirement actions.
    • Configure approvers via the script include to tailor approval responsibilities.
    • Enable email notifications to keep stakeholders informed about approval actions, improving communication and transparency.
    • Leverage instant publish and retire workflows for faster content management when approvals are not required.
    • Use subflows to build custom workflows that align with organizational processes.

    The publishing and retirement processes for a knowledge article are controlled by workflows defined for the knowledge base that the article belongs to.

    You can assign different workflows to each Knowledge Base .

    You can use one of the default workflows, or create your own workflows to define custom publishing and retirement processes for different types of knowledge.

    For the workflows that require approval, you can configure which users can approve or reject by editing the getApprovers() function in the KBWorkflow script include.

    Table 1. Default knowledge workflows
    Workflow Description
    Knowledge - Approval Publish Requests approval from a manager of the knowledge base. Articles in approval are In Review state before moving to Published state once approved or to Scheduled for publish if set to publish later. If the manager rejects the request, the workflow is canceled and the article remains in Draft state.

    If ownership groups is enabled, email notifications with a link to the article are sent to the ownership group members for approval.

    If ownership groups is not enabled, email notifications with a link to the article are sent to knowledge base managers for approval.

    A notification is also sent to authors or revisers of articles to inform them that their article has been approved or rejected.

    To turn on approval email notifications, set the glide.knowman.enable_approval_notification property to true.

    Note:
    Only the active user receives the notifications.
    Knowledge - Approval Retire Requests approval from a manager of the knowledge base before moving the article to the retired state. The workflow is canceled and the article remains in the published state if any manager rejects the request.

    If ownership groups is enabled, email notifications with a link to the article are sent to the ownership group members for approval.

    If ownership groups is not enabled, email notifications with a link to the article are sent to knowledge base managers for approval.
    Knowledge - Instant Publish Immediately publishes a draft article without requiring an approval, or publishes on the scheduled publish date if set to publish later.
    Knowledge - Instant Retire Immediately retires a published article without requiring an approval.
    Knowledge - Publish Knowledge A subflow that moves the knowledge article to the published state. You can use this subflow when defining your own workflow.
    Knowledge - Retire Knowledge A subflow that moves the knowledge article to the retired state. You can use this subflow when defining your own workflow.
    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.

    Email notifications for approval workflows

    You can send email notifications for approval workflows.
    • Notify approvers about knowledge articles submitted for their approvals.
    • Notify authors about the approval status of their knowledge articles.
    To send email notifications for approval workflows, enable the Send notification to approvers and authors in article approval workflow property (glide.knowman.enable_approval_notification). Beginning with New York, the property is enabled by default. Existing customers on release versions prior to New York can enable this property to send email notifications. Disable any custom notifications for article approvals before enabling this property. If the glide.knowman.enable_approval_notification property is not available, an administrator can create the property and set its value to true. For more information, see Knowledge Management properties.