About the IU Knowledge Base transition to ServiceNow Knowledge

On this page:

Overview

In fall 2024, Indiana University will retire the Knowledge Management System (KMS) and move the IU Knowledge Base to the ServiceNow Knowledge platform. This change will take further advantage of IU's investment in ServiceNow and enable additional ServiceNow functionality.

If you have questions or comments at any time throughout this process, contact the KM team at kb@iu.edu.

Coffee hour recordings

The project team hosted two coffee hours for the IU community to hear about the project:

Wednesday, July 10, 1-2pm
Meeting recording
Thursday, August 1, 1-2pm
Meeting recording

About the transition

Knowledge Base articles will have new ServiceNow URLs, but old KB URLs will redirect appropriately, as will the top-level kb.iu.edu page.

Important:

Be sure to use ServiceNow article permalinks when you want to save article URLs, rather than the URL in your browser's address bar, as those are version specific. Learn more about this below.
If your group owns content in the Knowledge Base, the way you work with the UITS Knowledge Management (KM) team won't change. The KM team will continue to work in the current KMS system until the cutover date, when all data will be imported into the new environment.
After the cutover, the KM team will still be working with you in the same ways to maintain your documentation, and you may continue sending new content and updates to kb@iu.edu. Questions are always welcome!
Restricting content to internal audiences will still be possible. This will be done by ACM groups, rather than ADS security groups. If some or all of your documentation is restricted and you have an ACM group set with that audience, send it to kb@iu.edu so the KM team can make sure all is up-to-date as it should be.
The Contributor Authoring Environment (CAE) and other KMS tools will be retired.
- If you have access to use the CAE (where you can select the pencil icon on KB pages) to submit documentation requests, be sure that you route work you have there to the KM team soon or it will be lost. You can continue to communicate with the KM team and submit requests via kb@iu.edu, or by assigning tickets to the Knowledge Management group in ServiceNow.
- Rather than worklists, the KM team plans to work with stakeholders using reports and shared spreadsheets when you need to view and work on a list of particular articles. More to come on this!
Archived content will no longer be available via KB search; however, the KM team will have access to archived documents. If you have questions about a page that was archived or retired, email the KM team at kb@iu.edu.
Knowledge Base mailforms have been replaced with other appropriate contact means (contact forms, web pages, email addresses).
Website owners using the KMS REST API to pull KB content have worked with the KM team to adapt their sites. Most are linking to KB pages from their sites, and the ServiceNow API is also an option.

Important:

If you are using the KMS public API, contact the KM team at kb@iu.edu to discuss future plans to avoid issues with your site. Because the KMS public API requires no authentication, the KM team cannot determine what endpoints or teams are using this method to pull content from the Knowledge Base.

Screenshots of the new ServiceNow kb.iu.edu interface

Login scenario 1: Front page not logged in
- Selecting Log in to find more articles initiates an IU Login or passes your credentials if you are already logged in
- KM team can modify "Featured articles" list as needed
- "Get help with IT" articles will rarely need changing
Login scenario 2: Front page logged in
- Your name appears in the upper right
Results scenario 1: Search results
- Article numbers and last updated metric are displayed
- Search results list both public and internal articles if logged in
  - Note that search results don't indicate which articles are internal, but this is noted when you select an article to view
Results scenario 2: View public article
- Displays last updated metric (xx days ago)
- "Copy Permalink" is very important
  - The permalink will always take you to the article's latest version; always copy the permalink rather than the URL in your browser's address bar
  - The address bar URL is tied to that particular version of that article; if the KM team revises the article after you copy that URL and you then visit it, you'll view that same older version of the article (not the latest version), and it will display with a selectable message at the top saying that an updated version of the article is available
- Related articles are listed on the right
- Many pages contain internal notes as this example does, so be sure you're always logged into the KB so you see all the content available to you
Results scenario 3: View internal article
- Displays ServiceNow "Can Read" criteria, in this case "km-aud-t2-accounts", meaning this article is internal to the Tier 2 Accounts team (public articles do not contain "Can Read")

Considerations and questions about using ServiceNow Knowledge

Article URLs and permalinks: As noted above, always use the Copy Permalink option on each article page, which will return the latest version of each article.
Search results: Search results both at kb.iu.edu and in the ServiceNow agent view do not indicate whether articles are public or internal. The project team strongly recommends that when using the agent view within ServiceNow, you have a window open to kb.iu.edu where you can open articles to see who can view them (ServiceNow's "Can read" criteria).
Google search results: Pages from other schools using ServiceNow Knowledge are returned in Google search results, and we expect that ours will be as well.
Dark mode: You can control dark mode through your browser's settings, rather than in ServiceNow.