Mass updating published articles

Question

I have ~1000 Knowledge Articles that need to be updated. I've come across this class to accomplish this programmatically. Although I'm getting the following error every time I try to call one of these methods.

System.HandledException: You can't perform this action. Be sure the action is valid for the current state of the article, and that you have permission to perform it.

This is the code that generated the error:

for(Article_Type__kav k : [SELECT Id, ArticleNumber, KnowledgeArticleId 
                             FROM Article_Type__kav 
                            WHERE PublishStatus = 'Online' 
                              AND Language = 'en_US']){
String onlineK=KBManagement.PublishingService.editOnlineArticle(k.KnowledgeArticleId,false);
}

I've tried the same using the KnowledgeArticleVersion and filtering by type as well. Same error. I'm running this as a system administrator and am able to create/edit/update/delete/publish articles through the UI as well. Is there a permission I'm missing to utilize the PublishingService class? Any help is greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

This method creates draft articles from online articles, so this happens because one or more of those online article already has a draft article so you cannot create another draft article(you cannot have 2 drafts for a single article at the same time).

This should work for you

    for(FAQ__kav k : [SELECT Id, ArticleNumber, KnowledgeArticleId
                      FROM FAQ__kav
                      WHERE PublishStatus = 'Online'  AND Language = 'en_US']){
         try{
             String onlineK=KBManagement.PublishingService.editOnlineArticle(k.KnowledgeArticleId,false);
        }
     catch(exception e){
         //nothing to do here, draft existed 
     }                                        


  }

Answer 2

The issue may be caused due to

1.You dont have knolwedge User Checked on your user .From your description of problem I am ruling this out since you say from UI you are able to do this .But just double check your user record to see if knowledge User is checked

2.Ensure proper permissions like

“Manage Articles” (This permission is on by default in the System Administrator profile.)

AND

“Read”, “Create”, and “Edit” on the article type

AND

A publish or archive article action, set on the Article Actions Setup page

Also note that if one of records fail in your code ,all the records fail ,try doing with hardcoded Id first one by one

KBManagement.PublishingService.editOnlineArticle('put your harcode Id once',false); 

Answer 3

Another cause for this error can be when a draft article is currently in the middle of an approval process. If you try to delete the draft article using Apex when there is a pending approval (and possibly when the approval process locks the record) you may experience the same error message.

Simply approve or reject the draft before deleting it, or run a script to reject all approvals in flight.