Article Lifecycle
Median days from Draft to Published, time spent in each Status, count of ChangesRequested round-trips per Article. Surfaces authoring-pipeline bottlenecks at the SME and Compliance steps.
Review and publishing
Approve the exact article revision and publish a frozen version.
PendingSMEYou
- AAS-30692 ART-10367 430
- AAS-35098 ART-38889 410
- AAS-65747 ART-77063 930
- AAS-32240 ART-28726 720
- AAS-74123 ART-86847 500
AAS-30692
- Article
- ART-10367
- ReviewRound
- ARR-41764
- SubmittedRevision
- 430
- Sequence
- 70
- Reviewer
- ATH-1630
- Status
- Pending
Approve technical review waits for the subject matter expert.
Give reviewers a stable packet
Submission captures the article revision, complete content hash, review policy and required reviewers. The assigned Subject Matter Expert checks technical accuracy. Compliance review is added when the configured policy requires it, including relevant public policy or reference content. A reviewer works on the exact packet assigned to them, not whichever draft happens to exist when they open the page.
Required review steps cannot be skipped. The author cannot approve their own submission by switching to another role, and KB Manager cannot replace a missing specialist decision with a general approval. If a required reviewer is unavailable or unresolved, the team must assign an eligible person under the policy before the article can progress.
Make requested changes start a fresh round
A reviewer can approve the assigned step or request changes with an explanation. Requested changes return the article to the author and cancel the unfinished decisions from that round. Resubmission creates a fresh packet with its own revision and reviewer set. The earlier decision remains in the history but does not approve the changed answer.
This rule also covers tags, audience, links and attachments. A media file cannot be replaced after review while leaving the surrounding article text unchanged. An approval made against an old hash or a completed review round is rejected. The lifecycle view helps KB Manager distinguish an article waiting for a specialist from one returned for an author’s changes.
Publish once and preserve what was live
When all current required reviews are complete, KB Manager can publish the approved revision. Publishing freezes the article body, title, summary, tags, related targets and media manifest together. It also records the version difference and reading time. The previous published snapshot is superseded only as the new one becomes current, so readers do not receive a partially updated answer.
A repeated publish command returns the existing version. Draft edits cannot later change published media bytes or searchable tags. Withdrawal removes the current answer from readers, search and media delivery while retaining its history for authorized staff. Current category restrictions still apply to an older snapshot, so an answer moved under an internal-only area cannot remain public through a cached link. These controls make publication a clear, traceable outcome rather than a label on a mutable draft.
Modules
-
Article authoring
Turn a useful answer into a structured draft with the context readers need.
-
Review and publishing
Approve the exact article revision and publish a frozen version.
-
Search and self-service
Help customers and support agents find the current answer they can access.
-
Content gaps and feedback
Turn unanswered searches and reader feedback into accountable content work.
-
Knowledge maintenance
Keep review dates and broken-link work visible after publication.
-
Helpdesk and insights
Reuse support answers and measure what happened after customers read them.
Reports
All reportsStale-Article Health
Articles with ReviewDueDate in the past, by Owner and Category, plus HelpfulRatio drift vs. last-reviewed snapshot. Drives the weekly stale-article review.
Roles and permissions
Drafts and maintains assigned knowledge articles.
Checks assigned submitted articles for technical accuracy.
Checks required assigned content under the configured review policy.
Searches approved knowledge while helping customers.
Finds and rates current public answers.
Related processes
Draft to published answer
Move an exact article revision through the required reviews into publication.
4 stages · 1 approval
Search to useful answer
Deliver the permitted published answer and capture its actual reading context.
4 stages · 0 approvals
Content gap to reviewed update
Turn search gaps, ratings and overdue review into a published improvement.
4 stages · 1 approval