GRC-generated policies in employee center

 

How GRC-Generated Policies Become Visible in Employee Center

End-to-End Flow and Design Explanation

Overview

When a Policy is published in GRC: Policy and Compliance Management, a Knowledge Article is automatically generated. However, that article does not immediately appear in the Employee Center (ESC) topics.

This is intentional and follows the Employee Center taxonomy-based content surfacing model.

However, it is important to note that policies must have a Type defined to be properly published to a Knowledge Base Category and become visible in the Employee Center.

GRC-generated Knowledge Articles follow the same process that ServiceNow uses for all Employee Center knowledge content. The observed behavior is not a defect but an intended aspect of the platform design.

This article explains the complete end-to-end flow and the reasoning behind it.

1. Policy Publication (GRC Layer)

When a Policy (sn_compliance_policy) transitions to Published, the Business Rule "Publish to KB" executes.

What Happens

1. A Knowledge Article (kb_knowledge) is created or versioned
2. The article is published
3. The article is linked back to the Policy
4. The Knowledge Category is determined by the Policy configuration
5. The Policy must have a Type to be categorized correctly

If the Policy does not have a Type:

• It will not be assigned correctly to a Knowledge Category
• It will not become eligible for Employee Center surfacing

Result

A new Knowledge Article exists with:

• Knowledge Base: Governance, Risk, and Compliance
• Category: Policy (or configured KB category)
• Workflow state: Published

At this point:

• The article exists in Knowledge Management
• It is NOT yet connected to Employee Center topics

2. Employee Center Topic Configuration (Taxonomy Layer)

In Employee Center:

Navigate to:

Topic → Policies → Catalog and knowledge categories

You will see mappings like:

| Content Type | Knowledge Category |

| ----------------- | --------------------------- |

| Knowledge     | Policy                           |

This configuration:

• Does NOT automatically connect articles.
• Defines eligibility rules for surfacing.

When a new GRC-generated KB article matches the configured category:

The column Available content for association increases only after "Surface New Unconnected Content of Categories" is executed/run.

This means:

The content is eligible but not yet visible in Employee Center.

3. Content Surfacing Job (Discovery Step)

Scheduled Job:

Surface New Unconnected Content of Categories

This job:

1. Scans topics with category mappings.
2. Identifies KB articles matching those mappings.
3. Inserts records into: unconnected_category_content

Script executed:

new global.TopicCategoryContentSurfacingUtil().surfaceContent();

What this job does

1. Scans all topics with category mappings.
2. Finds KB articles matching:
• Knowledge Base
• KB Category
3. Inserts records into: unconnected_category_content

This table acts as a staging area for review.

At this point:

• The article is discoverable
• It is not yet connected to the topic

4. Review & Manual Association (Governance Step)

From the Topic record, Related link:

Check for updated content in categories

This opens the Associated catalog and kb categories (unconnected_category_content) list.

The administrator can then:

1. Select the new content
2. Click Update topic with content

This creates records in: m2m_connected_content

This is the table that actually powers ESC topic rendering.

Once this record exists, the article becomes visible in the Employee Center:

5. Rendering in Employee Center

ESC topics read content from: m2m_connected_content

Once a row exists, there is linking:

• Topic
• Knowledge Article
• Content Type (Taxonomy Content Configuration)

The article immediately appears in:

?id=emp_taxonomy_topic&topic_id=<topic_sys_id>

Behavior for New vs Existing KB Articles

New KB Articles

Newly created KB articles must be manually associated to the Employee Center taxonomy topic.

This step is required and expected behavior.

Existing KB Articles

Existing KB articles behave differently.

If a Policy transitions, for example:

Published → Draft → Published

The existing Employee Center article:

• Is automatically updated
• The previous version is removed
• No manual re-association is required

This is because the m2m_connected_content link already exists.

Only newly generated KB articles require manual association.

Why ServiceNow designed it this way

The above logic was implemented by ServiceNow to allow greater control over what becomes visible in Employee Center.

This model ensures:

• Governance over surfaced content
• Controlled visibility
• Prevention of unintended exposure of knowledge articles

This behavior aligns with the Employee Center taxonomy governance model.

Historically, enhancements to streamline this behavior were mentioned in roadmap discussions. However, as of now, no official enhancements have been released that change this flow.

Full Flow Summary

Key Tables Involved

Automation Options (If Required)

If governance review is unnecessary for GRC-generated policies, automation can:

1. Automatically process unconnected_category_content
2. Or directly insert into m2m_connected_content

However, this bypasses the OOTB curation step.

Conclusion

The system behaves as designed:

• GRC publishes correctly.
• ESC taxonomy correctly identifies eligible content.
• Manual approval is required before rendering.

Understanding this flow prevents unnecessary customization and clarifies expected behavior.

That's a wrap!