Modify Articles with Mass Update

You can perform administrative updates on multiple articles by creating a mass update job. For example, you can find all articles having a specific owner and change the owner of those articles.

You can perform the following tasks using mass update:

Publish all selected articles
Unpublish all selected articles
Change the owner of all selected articles
Change the start date for all selected articles
Change the expiration date for all selected articles
Change the review date for all selected articles

Mass Update Articles

To perform a mass update, you use the article search functionality to search for a list of articles, select the articles which you need to update, provide details about what needs to be updated, and schedule the mass update job.

In this example, we are going to change the owner for all articles owned by Jane Doe to Sandra Roberts and update the expiry date for those articles. To do this, use the following procedure.

Navigate to the article list page.
Search for all articles owned by Jane Doe.
Select all the articles owned by Jane Doe.
The Update icon shows the number of articles you have selected.
Click the Update icon.
Select the article attributes which you want to update. For this example, click Other updates and select Owner and Expiration Date.
Search for and select Sandra Roberts in the Search by Name field.
Click Continue.
Specify the date in the Expiration Date field.
Click Continue.
The Review and Submit page provides you with a summary of the mass update job.
(Optional) Schedule the date and time when you want your mass update job to run.
If you do not provide a date and time, the job will run immediately when you submit it.
(Optional) Enter the reason for the update.
This reason will appear in the history of each article updated by this job.
Enable the Update the latest version of each article selected option if you want to ensure that the latest version of the articles is updated.
For example, if you searched for live articles, your search results will show you the version of an article that is live, but it may not be the latest version of the article.
Enable the Maintain article state after update option if you want to ensure that each article retains its existing state after it is updated.
For example, if this job updates an article which is live, a new version of the article is created, which is still in unpublished state. Selecting this option ensures that the updated version of the article is republished.
Click Submit.
An update confirmation is displayed with the Update ID of your job. Make a note of the Update ID, so that you can track the status of your job.
Click the desired option to either return to the article list or view the job status.

The update job is added to the Mass Updates job list queue.

View the Status of a Mass Update Job

You can track the status of the mass update jobs from the Mass Updates page. A mass update job can have various statuses such as Scheduled, Active, Canceled or Completed. You can view the number of articles you had selected for the job, the number of articles processed, the number of articles failed, and the number of articles updated so far.

For a detailed report, you can export the details of a mass update job to a .csv file. This file lists the status of each article and shows you which articles were updated, and which articles failed. It also provides a comment providing the reason why an article update failed.

Use this procedure to view the job status of your mass update:

Navigate to the article list page.
Click Updates.
The Mass Updates page shows the list of mass update jobs.
Look for the row containing the Update ID of the job whose status you want to view.
Under Actions, click the actions menu, and click Export Details.
A .csv file is downloaded with the details of the mass update job.

Modify a Mass Update Job

You can reschedule, cancel, or edit a mass update job that is still in Scheduled state. You can also resubmit a job whose status is Canceled.

Use this procedure to modify a mass update job:

Navigate to the article list page.
Click Updates.
The Mass Updates page shows the list of mass update jobs.
Look for the row containing the Update ID of the job which you want to modify.
Under Actions, click the actions menu, and select the desired option.