Modify a published column length

Products

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

Issue/Introduction

Web Screen Painter (WSP) does not allow modifying the new columns that were published.

Environment

CA Service Desk 17.1 and higher

Resolution

After a site-defined schema has been published, web screen painter will consider it as a standard schema and will not allow any changes to the columns. To verify,

1. Login to Web Screen Painter as Administrator.
2. Go to Tools->Schema Designer and click on the custom column created (see Figure 1):
   
   Figure 1
   
   
   
   
3. In Figure 1, a column zTest was added to the CR object with data type as STRING and length as 150, however, web screen painter does not allow to modify the length.
4. To modify the length of zTest, go to $NX_ROOT/site/mods and open wsp_schema.sch with a text editor (see Figure 2):
   
   Figure 2:
   

   

5. Change the zTest length to 250 and click on File->Save to save the changes.
6. Go to $NX_ROOT/site/mods/majic folder and open wsp.mods file with a text editor (see Figure 3).
   
   Figure 3:
   

   

7. Change the length of zTest to 250. Click on File->Save to save the changes.
8. Click on Start ->Run ->type cmd and click OK to open the command prompt.
9. On command prompt type the command pdm_wspupd and hit enter.
10. pdm_wspupd compares wsp_schema.sch with wspcol table in database and indicates the changes (Figure 4).
    
    Figure 4:
    

    

11. Verify if the changes are correct and type Y to accept the changes.
12. It updates the changes to the wspcol table (see Figure 5).
    
    Figure 5:
    

    

13. Open the SQL Server Management Studio/ SQL Query Analyzer and run the command to update the column length.
    
    Alter table Call_Req Alter Column ZTest nvarchar(250)
    
    
14. Stop Service Desk Manager Services.
15. In the command prompt run the command pdm_publish (see Figure 6):
    
    Figure 6:
    

    

16. Start Service Desk Manager Services.

Additional Information

This method can only be used to adjust the length of an existing CUSTOM field, one that was previously established using Web Screen Painter Schema Designer. 

Due to the controls in place on the backend MDB database schema, adjusting the length of an OOB field is unsupported.