Article Lifecycle Overview

Overview

All knowledge articles go through several stages during their lifespan, beginning with Not Submitted and progressing through Archived. An archived article is one in which the content is no longer explicitly relevant (e.g. the corresponding service has been retired) and should not be displayed to the customer; however, the institutional knowledge represented by the article shall be retained.

How do I use this technology?

The status of an article can be viewed from a search result.

Service Portal Knowledge Base search results article status highlighted

As well as when viewing the article directly. When reading an archived article a banner notice will be added with the text "This article has been archived and may contain outdated information."

Service Portal Knowledge Base sample archived article with status highlighted

Article Status Stages and Definitions

  • Not Submitted: A draft or work-in-progress article
    • Any Knowledge author, can create an article, and set the status to Not Submitted.
    • Article owners can continue to edit their own articles as long as it remains in the Not Submitted state.
    • It is strongly encouraged, just like when writing a document in a text editor, to click the Save, or Save as Draft button frequently to minimize the chance of losing edits due to any browser issues.
  • Submitted: An article has a resolution. Resolution has not been validated.
    • Once a resolution (either a final solution or workaround) has been added, change the status to "Submitted."
  • Approved: An article that has been validated for reuse and the Service Owner, and the article is complete and reusable.
    • The resolution needs to be confirmed with the "Is this helpful" button three times to be considered validated.
    • Once the resolution has been validated, a Contributor, Publisher, or Coach can change the status to "Approved."
      • The Service Owner should be asked to review the article before approving it.
  • Rejected: As of Fall 2025, the KCS process does not use this status.
  • Archived: An article that has been retired from the Knowledge Base
    • Articles that have been marked as Archived will continue to show up in knowledge searches for individuals with a service portal KB role only, and are clearly marked as such.
    • Changing the status to Archived also removes the Published setting from the article.
    • When archiving an article, if a newer article exists, follow the prompts to reference it.
      • This will automatically redirect links to the archived article to the newer article.

Publishing Approved Articles

Articles that have been Approved and Published are available to customers on the UAA Service Portal Knowledge Base.

  • Published is a specific setting on an article that KB Publishers can apply to an article.
  • Only Approved articles can be Published.
  • KB Publishers should always communicate with the service owner before publishing knowledge, and should follow the Checklist for Publishing Knowledge.
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