The Approval Server manages the sizes of approver fields as well as a utility that is used for this purpose.

Lengths of approver fields

By default, approver names are limited to 255 characters and the list of members in an approval server role is limited to 512 characters. The Approval Server checks the lengths of the fields listed in the following table at startup, and enforces this length as the maximum limit.

You can increase the length of these fields to the maximum limit permitted by the database (VARCHAR limit) by manually executing a approval server utility.

 To use longer approver names with previews, make the following changes:

• For regular previews, increase the length of the Approvers and Original Approvers fields on AP:PreviewSignatures.
• For real-time previews, increase the length of the Approvers field on AP:PreviewInfo.

Setting the length of approver fields

Administrators can run the Approval Change Schema (chgschema) utility to set the length of approver fields on certain forms to the maximum limit allowed by the database. Approver fields checked for maximum length at startup lists the forms and their approver fields that are affected. 

The syntax for chgschema is as follows:

The following table describes the parameters that administrators need to supply when running the chgschema utility:

The chgschema utility increases the lengths of the approver fields provided that the current lengths are not already set to the maximum VARCHAR limit, or to unrestricted or 0. In case of the Member List field, if the maximum length supported by the database is less than 512 characters, the current field length is not modified. This ensures that the corresponding data remains intact.

After running the utility, restart the approval server for the changes to take effect.