This documentation supports the 20.02 version of BMC Service Request Management.To view an earlier version, select the version from the Product version menu.

Restrictions in creating questions

Be aware of the following restrictions when creating questions.

  • Creating required, hidden, or read-only questions — The question requirements must match the data targets you map, as described in Mapping-variables-to-questions. For example, because the Description field is required, the question should be required as well.
    • When the user's answer to a question is pushed to a required variable, specify this question as required. For example, if you want a user to enter the urgency of a change request, make sure to specify that an Urgency question is required.
    • If a user ignores the question and submits the request, the fulfillment application generates an error (which you must troubleshoot later).
    • If you hide the question, the fulfillment process proceeds without requiring any response from the user. 

Related topics

Creating-questions-to-use-with-SRDs

Adding-questions-to-an-SRD

  • Hidden questions work in the following ways:
    • The question and response are not visible to users, approvers, coordinators, service desk agents, or administrators in the Request Entry console or Request Details.
    • You must enter a default response or use an action to add a response value. If you hide a required question but do not provide a response, an error is displayed when the user tries to submit a request.
    • Do not hide Date/Time, Date, or Time fields.
  • Entering default values — Creating a default value overrides any previously configured defaults.
  • Using HTML markup in questions — HTML markup, such as <b> bold </b> is not supported in question text or response options. 

  • Using special characters in questions — If you want to use the greater than (>) sign, less than (<) sign, or quotation mark (") in a question or response option, use encoded text (&gt for >, &lt for <, and &quot for a quotation mark); otherwise, browsers will interpret these characters as HTML markup, which is not supported.

    Best practice
    For embedding links or URLs, we recommend that you do not embed links or URLs in question text. Instead, use the instruction field if you need to provide links or URLs with questions.

Be careful about the variables that are exposed to users. An attempt to create a work order from the SRD will fail if a user enters the wrong values, for example, if the Priority field in a work order has a value other than Critical, High, Medium, or Low.

Warning

To prevent command automation interface (CAI) mapping errors on text questions, determine the right value to enter in the Limit Input Length field to on the Question Management form. If you are passing the values from a text question from BMC Service Request Management to a fulfillment application (for example, BMC Incident Management), make sure you set the proper field length values. Otherwise, errors might appear in the CAI events trying to create records in the fulfillment applications, because data from one of the fields in the service request is too long (for example, trying to pass 128 characters to a field that only accepts 100 characters).

 

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