Service Portal: Ways to handle performance degradation in Knowledge Category containing large number of articles

Overview

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In Service Portal, Performance Degradation can occur when a knowledge category contains a large number of articles in kb_category page. This occurs because this page loads all the articles at once, not on demand, and there is no way OOB to control this behavior. Here are some ways to work around it.

Problem Ticket PRB1194786 has already been raised to load the articles on demand.

Workaround

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Solution 1: Limit the number of articles

Limiting the number articles loaded on to the page, during testing 250 articles load on to the page in less than a second. Please follow the steps:

1. Navigate to Service Portal > Widgets 
2. Search for KB Category Page widget. This is the widget that loads the articles. 
3. Clone the widget 
4. Modify the piece of code in the newly cloned widget: 
   • Server Script Modify line number 14 from
     data.items = $sp.getKBCategoryArticleSummaries(data.category, 0, 250); 
     To 
     data.items = $sp.getKBCategoryArticleSummaries(data.category, 250, 250); 
   • Explanation 
     getKBCategoryArticleSummaries(<category sys_id>, <article limit>, <char count for description>) 
5. Add it back to the page using widget instance 
6. Navigate to https://yourinstance.service-now.com/sp_instance.do?sys_id=b6f5c370d7000200a9ad1e173e24d498 
7. In the widget tab widget field, change KB Category Page to Cloned Widget 

Solution 2: Using Knowledge Management Service Portal 

Knowledge Management Service Portal is a newly available plugin to work around some of the drawbacks with stock Service Portal like support for multiple knowledge bases. This plugin introduces a new search page kb_search, which loads articles on demand and could apply different filters to it. 

https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/jakarta-servicenow-platform/page/product/knowledge-management/concept/knowledge-management-service-portal.html