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 an approval server utility. For more information, see Setting the length of approver fields.

In release 7.5.00, the approval server checks the size of the Approvers field only at startup and enforces this length as the maximum limit for approver names. If the default limits are insufficient, you need to increase the field lengths manually.

 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 Approvers fields on certain forms to the maximum limit allowed by the database. The Approvers fields checked for maximum length at startup lists the forms and their Approvers 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 Approvers 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.