Knowledge Management setup guide for admins

  • Release version: Yokohama
  • Updated January 30, 2025
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Knowledge Management setup guide for admins

    This guide provides ServiceNow administrators with the essential steps to set up Knowledge Management (KM) effectively, enabling users to create and manage knowledge bases and articles. Proper setup involves collaboration with stakeholders to define requirements that align with organizational needs.

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    Key Steps for Setup

    • Engage Stakeholders: Identify roles such as Knowledge Manager, Knowledge Admin, Knowledge Coach, Domain Experts, Content Creators, Community Managers, and Line Managers. Collaborate with them to clarify who consumes and creates content, workflows for article lifecycle, and any special KM behaviors needed (e.g., attachment search visibility, multilingual support).
    • Assign Knowledge Roles: Determine and assign appropriate KM roles to users and groups to ensure clear responsibilities and permissions.
    • Customize Knowledge Workflows: If the default publishing and retiring workflows do not meet your organizational needs, develop custom workflows tailored to your KM processes.
    • Configure Knowledge Properties: Adjust knowledge base properties beyond defaults to meet specific user or business requirements.
    • Enable Multilingual Support: Activate Knowledge Management Internationalization plugins to support content in languages other than English if needed.
    • Coordinate Knowledge Base Setup: Inform knowledge managers and administrators when they can begin configuring knowledge bases, referencing the Knowledge base setup guide for detailed steps.

    Additional Guidance

    Be prepared to assist with further customization such as configuring knowledge landing pages or other features based on evolving requirements.

    Using Guided Setup

    ServiceNow provides a guided setup tool for Knowledge Management, accessible via Knowledge > Administration > Guided Setup, which offers a step-by-step sequence to configure KM on your instance efficiently.

    Before users in your organization can start creating knowledge bases and knowledge articles, you must set up Knowledge Management. Work with stakeholders to define requirements for setting up Knowledge Management effectively to meet the needs of users.

    Requirements

    Role required: admin.

    Before you begin

    Meet with the stakeholders
    Stakeholder Responsibilities
    Knowledge manager Defines and oversees the knowledge management processes for day-to-day operations related to content publishing and usage.
    Knowledge admin Configures advanced settings for specific Knowledge Management features
    Knowledge coach Enables users to adhere to content standards.
    Knowledge domain expert Provides domain knowledge expertise.
    Version author Contributor to a particular version of an article.
    Content creators and reviewers Create, review, and update articles in the knowledge bases.
    Community managers Focus on the creation and curating of social content.
    Line managers Manage teams that create and use knowledge articles
    With stakeholders, determine the following requirements
    • Who are the consumers of the content in the knowledge bases?
    • Who are the writers, editors, and managers for the knowledge base articles?
    • What are the required workflows to publish and retire articles?
    • What are the unique behaviors required for your knowledge management implementation? For example, should attachments appear in search results?
    • Do you want to translate knowledge articles into other languages?

    What to do

    Assign knowledge roles to users and groups
    Determine which Knowledge Management roles are appropriate for each user, and then assign those roles .
    Create custom Knowledge workflows
    If the default knowledge workflows for publishing and retiring knowledge articles are not appropriate for your knowledge bases, create custom workflows for those knowledge bases.
    Configure Knowledge properties
    If the default knowledge properties do not fulfill the requirements of users, reconfigure the properties as necessary.
    Activate support for other languages besides English
    If languages other than English must be supported, activate the Knowledge Management Internationalization plugins.
    Coordinate with knowledge managers for knowledge base setup
    Let knowledge managers and administrators know that they can start configuring their knowledge bases. For details, refer them to the Knowledge base setup guide for knowledge admins and managers.

    Next steps

    Depending on any other requirements for the knowledge bases, you may be asked to help with additional tasks, such as configuring knowledge landing pages.

    Using guided setup to implement Knowledge Management

    Knowledge Management guided setup provides a sequence of tasks that help you configure Knowledge Management on your instance. To open Knowledge Management guided setup, navigate to Knowledge > Administration > Guided Setup.

    For more information about using the guided setup interface, see Using guided setup.