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Runtime behavior of KA article links (by docid or by answer id) at Customer Portal UI when the target article is unavailable (unpublished, expired, ...)
Answer ID 12569   |   Last Review Date 02/28/2023

What is the runtime behavior of KA article links (by docid or by answer id) at Customer Portal UI when the target article is unavailable (unpublished, expired, ...) and their implications to the custom error page handling (if any)? 

Environment:

Knowledge Advanced for Oracle B2C Service

Resolution:

When KA author adds KA article links in RichText field, he may create them with docid or answer id of the target KA article.  Their implementation has the following difference in runtime:

1) For KA article link by answer id case, it will be always showed as static URL (like https://my-ka-site.custhelp.com/app/answers/answer_view/a_id/xxxxxx) at the Customer Portal UI no matter whether the target article is accessible or not.

2) For KA article link by docid case, it has runtime javascript (js) logic embedded at the Customer Portal UI to first dynamically map/resolve it to answer id and then check the accessibility of the target answer. 

- If it is accessible, it will be dynamically resolved to show as valid URL (ie, same as the static article link by answer id above like https://my-ka-site.custhelp.com/app/answers/answer_view/a_id/xxxxxx) at the Customer Portal UI then.

- If it is not accessible (like it is unpublished, expired, or the current Contact does not have the proper security/usergroup permissions, ...), it will be dynamically showed as an invalid URL (like https://my-ka-site.custhelp.com/app/answers/answer_view/a_id/0) then.  

As a result, when developer wants to implement custom error page to handle the inaccessible article links scenarios, they may need to aware the above runtime behavior differences and properly handle them if needed then.