Creating custom error messages in Service Desk

Products

• CA Service Desk Manager
• CA Service Management - Service Desk Manager

Issue/Introduction

Occasionally, customers may have a requirement to customize the error messages that appear when an end user is operating the Service Desk application.  

Example:  

Instead of this message appearing when an invalid year is inputted on a date field:
"The Month for the Start Time is invalid"

The need may be for this to read:
"The Month for the Starting Time is invalid"

Environment

CA Service Desk 17.1 and higher

Resolution

One will need to modify the message catalog.  This is the "pdm.xml" file which contains all of the error codes and corresponding descriptive text.

To modify the message catalog, complete the following steps:

1. Refer to the format of pdm.xml that is located in NX_ROOT\bin.
    
2. Create a customized copy of pdm.xml and place it in the NX_ROOT\site\mods\msg_catalog directory.
    
3. Add, modify, or add and modify messages in the XML message files
    
4. Restart Service Desk Manager service.

Additional Information

We do not advise changing the msg id integer value as this will make it impossible to identify the unique error code that also presents when a given scenario takes place.