Importing knowledge articles into an instance can create articles with duplicate
numbers.
The Knowledge
Number field is auto-generated and is incremented
every time you create a new article in an instance. The initial value for the
Number field is 10,000. To customize this number:
- Navigate to .
- Search for Knowledge in the Table
column.
- Click the Controls related list tab.
- Enter a new Number and click Update.
Importing knowledge articles from another instance or as part of the demo data for another
application may introduce an article with a number that is already in use. Because the
Knowledge Number field is not uniquely indexed, the import completes
without error.
With duplicate knowledge article numbers present, links to article view pages that use the
knowledge number can behave inconsistently. For example, if there are two articles with the
same Knowledge number KB0000033, the following link may open either of these two articles
randomly: kb_view.do?sysparm_article=KB0000033. This can happen in
Knowledge search results where clicking on a result opens a different article instead of the
article displayed in the search results.
Avoiding duplicate Knowledge article numbers
To avoid inserting Knowledge articles with duplicate numbers into a production environment:
- Do not import demo data articles in production environment.
- Verify the numbers of the articles to be inserted to make sure they are not already in
use.
- Create a before insert business rule on the Knowledge table (kb_knowledge) to ensure
the new number is not already in use.
You can also update the initial value for the Knowledge
Number field
so that newly created articles do not conflict with existing articles.
- Navigate to .
- Search for Knowledge in the Table
column.
- Click the Knowledge link to open the Knowledge table form.
- Click the Controls related list tab.
- In the Number field, update the count to a number greater than
the largest value already in the system.
- Click Update.
