KB User's Guide - Documents Tab - Review and Validation Tools

This document explains how to use four document validation tools provided in KB Admin Tools for document editing. These tools help content editors review, verify, and maintain accurate article formatting and structure.

Key Benefits 

Use the document validation tools to verify links, formatting, and accessibility prior to publishing.

  • Error Detection: Identifies broken links, missing required fields, or formatting issues before publication.
  • Content Consistency: Ensures articles follow standardized templates, styles, and organizational rules.
  • Time Savings: Automates manual checks so administrators spend less time proofreading structural elements.
  • Quality Control: Improves overall knowledge base reliability by preventing incomplete or malformed pages from going live.

Preview

This tool allows you to preview your document without saving. To preview your document, click the Preview button in the upper-right panel of the edit screen, then choose Internal view or External view.

A new window will open, allowing you to preview how your document will look when it is published to the selected site.

Draft vs. published (formerly "Compare to active version")

Allows you to compare the document you are editing in draft mode with the live version. To compare a draft with the published doc, select Draft vs. published from the Options dropdown menu in the upper-right panel.

The draft vs published option is the third item in the Options dropdown.

This will bring up a new window displaying the draft version of your document on the left, and the current live version on the right. Differences will be color coded at the bottom of the screen.

Version History (formerly "Revision History")

This tool allows you to see a list of all of the changes that have been made to a document. To view the version history, select Version history from the Options dropdown menu in the upper-right panel.

Version history is the second item under the Options dropdown.

For more information on using the version history, see KB User's Guide - Documents Tab - How To View a Document's Version History.

The Show Changes button (Internal Live KB sites only)

To see the Show Changes button, open the document in your internal KB space. The button appears on the upper right side of the screen.

A document on the KB Internal Site. The Show changes button on the right is circled in red.

Clicking this button will display a pop up modal called Show Changes: document ID #. Only text content of the current version and the last published version are compared. A message is displayed if the document has no previous published versions to compare. At the very bottom of this pop-up window you'll find:

  • deleted (old) text is crossed out and red,
  • inserted (new) text is underlined and green.

Images, videos and formatting changes are ignored.

The image below shows an example of changes between the current version and the last published version of a document.

A window showing the changes between the current and last version of the document.


Keywords:
final check tools preview validate compare to active draft vs versus published see revisions versions history show changes button comparison restore error detection content consistency quality control 
Doc ID:
5241
Owned by:
Leah S. in KB User's Guide
Created:
2007-01-03
Updated:
2026-09-14
Sites:
KB User's Guide
Documents Tab