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Day 12 · Free ServiceNow tutorial

ServiceNow Knowledge management

Organise helpful content with knowledge bases and article workflows.

By Nayeem · ServiceNow Architect and Certified Technical Architect

Understand the concept

Knowledge management makes reusable guidance available to the right audience. Knowledge bases organise articles, categories support browsing, and lifecycle rules govern review, publication and retirement. User criteria can help control who reads or contributes, alongside the applicable security configuration.

A practical business example

The service desk publishes a password-reset article that employees can read, while a restricted technical procedure remains available only to authorised support staff.

What you will learn

• Explore knowledge bases and categories
• Understand an article lifecycle
• Review user criteria and feedback

Step-by-step practice

Use a personal learning instance and suitable permissions. Record your starting configuration before changing it.

1. Create a draft practice article in an appropriate knowledge base and category.
2. Write symptoms, prerequisites, steps and expected results in plain language.
3. Inspect the base’s publication workflow and submit the article through its configured review process.
4. Test access as an intended reader and a restricted user, then review feedback and maintenance ownership.

Common mistakes and troubleshooting

Publication and access behaviour vary with base settings and installed capabilities. A published article is not necessarily visible to every user.

Why test an article after publishing?

Its lifecycle state alone does not prove the intended audience can find and read it. Audience rules, permissions and search behaviour also matter.

Watch the lesson

Hands-on lab

Knowledge Management · Estimated practice: 100 to 130 minutes. Download the Word document and work through it alongside the video.

Keep learning

Use the ITSM interview questions with examples to practise explaining concepts. For platform reference information, consult the official ServiceNow documentation for your release.