The lifecycle of a Knowledge Base article begins with a Not Submitted article and progresses through when an article is Archived. You can see where an article is in the lifecycle by referring to its Status.
In this article:
Locating the Status of an Article
You can see the Status of an article in the Details area in the right column of the article when viewing it directly in the Knowledge Base.
Understanding Article Status
The flowchart above shows the lifecycle of an article status.
- Not Submitted: A draft or work-in-progress article
- Any technician in TDX can create a Not Submitted article, either from an incident or from the Knowledge Base.
- Technicians can continue to edit their own articles as long as the article is Not Submitted.
- Technicians can change the Owner of their Not Submitted articles to their Group; then anyone in the Group can work on the article.
- Submitted: An article that is ready for editor review
- Submitted articles can be found in the Articles Pending Review Knowledge Base menu.
- Group Knowledge Editors can edit and approve Submitted articles owned by their Group.
- Global Knowledge Editors can edit and approve any Submitted article.
Note: Global Knowledge Editors should ALWAYS communicate with the appropriate stakeholders before approving knowledge.
- Approved: An article that has been fully vetted and approved for use by an editor
- Editors should use the Checklist for Internal and Public-Facing Knowledge.
- Group Knowledge Editors can continue to edit Approved articles owned by their Group, unless they are also Published (see below).
- Note: Published to KB is not an article Status, but is a separate flag Global Knowledge Editors can apply to an article.
- Global Knowledge Editors can continue to edit any Approved articles.
- Note: Global Knowledge Editors should ALWAYS communicate with the appropriate stakeholders before editing knowledge.
- Only Approved articles display when a technician uses the Categories to browse the Knowledge Base.
- For this reason, Work in Progress (WIP) articles are also set to the Approved status. WIP articles are denoted by WORK IN PROGRESS: at the beginning of their titles.
- Rejected: An article that has been rejected for approval by an editor
- Note: While rejected articles can be edited by editors, someone without editing ability will not be able to make changes to a rejected article. If an editor wants a technician to modify and resubmit a rejected article, the editor should first reject the article, then manually change the status back to Not Submitted.
- Archived: An article that has been retired from the Knowledge Base
- Archived articles continue to show up in knowledge searches, but are clearly marked as such.
- Archived articles cannot also be Published.