Service Manager

Approving a Knowledge Article

If a knowledge article has to be approved by a group, depending on your settings, the article is approved if either all the approvers approve it or if only 51% of them do. By default, 51% of approvers must approve the article. In all cases, a Knowledge Manager can cast the decisive vote and approve a knowledge article.

If you are an approver for a knowledge collection, you are notified when the status for an article belonging to that specific collection is pending approval. See About the Knowledge Approval Workflow for more information about the knowledge approval process.

You can approve an article approval request through email or from the Self-Service portal.

The Approval Vote Tracking record for the approval instance of the knowledge article is updated to show your response.

Responding to a Knowledge Article Approval Request by Email

You can accept or reject a knowledge article by responding to it directly through email. When you are notified of an article approval request through email:

1.Click Reply. Do not modify the subject line of the email when sending your response through email.

2.In the body of the message, type approved or denied to indicate your acceptance or rejection of the article approval request.

•The approval keywords are configured in the FRS Approval Status Keyword tab records in the Email Configuration form. By default, the keywords to approve or reject through email are approved and denied.

•If you reject the article approval request, enter the reason for rejecting it in the second line of the body of the message.

3.Click Send.

Responding to a Knowledge Article Approval Request Using the Self-Service Portal

You can either click the link that appears in the email to go to the Self-Service Portal or log directly into the Self-Service Portal. If you use the Self-Service Portal for approvals, you must be logged in as a Self Service user. Contact your administrator to add the Self Service role to your employee profile if you are not able to log into the Self-Service Portal.

1.Log into the Self-Service portal.

2.Open the My Items workspace.

3.Click any item listed with the Approval status.

4.Approve or deny the article approval request.

•If you approve the request, click Approve, then click Approve again to dismiss the approval confirmation message and confirm the approval.

•If you deny the request, click Deny, then enter the reason for denying the request in the Deny Approval-Reason field and click Submit.

Viewing Approvals for Knowledge Articles

1.Log in to the Service Desk console as a Knowledge Manager.

2.Open the Approval Vote Tracking workspace. The pending and approved items are listed.

3.Sort the Name column for knowledge approvals.

4.Select the desired knowledge article and double-click it to view the form.

5.Click Go to to navigate to the knowledge article.

6.The Approval tab on the form shows the names of the approvers and the status of their approval (pending, approved, or denied).

7.The Email tab on the form shows the email records (if the approval vote was cast through email).

Viewing Approvals Linked to a Specific Article

1.Log in to the Service Desk console as a Knowledge Manager.

2. Open a knowledge article approval request.

3.Click the Approvals tab.

4.To view a tally of the votes, open the knowledge article approval request by selecting and double-clicking it.

Knowledge Approval Workflow

When the status of a knowledge article is updated to "In Review", a task is created in the logged status and the knowledge approval process starts. The system sends a notification that the knowledge article is ready for review to the appropriate group for the collection.

•If the task is rejected, the status of the entire knowledge article is updated to "Rejected" and the system emails the article owner that the article is rejected.

•If the task is marked completed, the knowledge article is updated to "Pending", and the system emails the appropriate approval board.

After the knowledge article has been approved, the system emails the knowledge article owner and changes the status to "Reviewed". By default, 51% of approvers must approve the article. In all cases, a Knowledge Manager can cast the decisive vote and approve a knowledge article.

The Knowledge Manager updates the status to "Published" when the article is ready to be published. See Knowledge State Transitions Reference for information about the states of a knowledge article.

Knowledge Article Collections

Each knowledge article is grouped under a collection, during the article creation. Depending on the collection in which the knowledge article is grouped under, the task is assigned to a defined corresponding group for approval. For example:

Collection	The Article is Sent to this Group:
Company Policy and Procedure	Company Policy and Procedure
Customer Knowledge	Customer Knowledge
Internal Knowledge	Internal Knowledge
IT Knowledge	IT Knowledge
Service Desk	Service Desk

When a new knowledge collection is created, articles grouped in the collection are sent to a contact group called Default Knowledge.