Impact of changing number of digits from 7 to 8 for incident table.

[aagman]

I have changed number of digits from 7 to 8 for incident table and for some incidents it is showing 8 digits but for some it is still showing 7 digits(I believe for old incidents).

Why it is still showing 7 digits(I believe for old incidents)?

[Community Alums]

Hi aagman,

It should be okay and work fine without any consequences if you change the digits from 7 to 8.

All you need to do is to follow below steps:

Please navigate to System Definition-->Tables-->Search Incident table-->Open the record-->Go to the 'Control' tab-->Change 'Number of digits' field to 8-->Update the record.

Hope you have followed the same and changed it to 7 to 8.

For some it will still show 7 digits as it will work automatically or auto numbered . it might be for the older incidents. try creating new incidents and check.

Mark my answer correct & Helpful, if Applicable.

Thanks,
Sandeep

[aagman]

Why it is still showing 7 digits for old incidents?

Why 0 is not appended for old incidents?

In other instance, it got appended. How it got appended there, is there any condition that is getting followed there?

[Kimsuphanit]

this guidance helps me to improve my customization.

[Kartik Sethi]

Hi @aagman 

There are no hurdles when you change the sequence digit in the Number fields. All the newly created records will follow the new configuration of Number maintenance but the old records will remain as is for obvious reasons.

Stakeholders, business owners or End Users might be referring to tickets based on the earlier number and hence ServiceNow does not change the old records numbering.

In case your business demands the numbers to be upgraded as per the new Number Maintenance configuration then you can create a Fix Script and update the numbers. You can a basic prototype of the script that you can use in Fix Script

Script:

var current = new GlideRecord("<table_name_goes_here>");
current.orderBy("sys_created_on");
current.query();
while(current.next()){
  current.<number_field_backend_name_goes_here> = getNextObjNumberPadded();
  current.autoSysFields(false);
  current.update();
}

Remark: After the deployment of the Update set (which contains changes related to Number maintenance) then you can deploy the above Script. This is a prototype, which you can modify to have any further Business requirements added. Also, make sure to communicate or store old record number details so that users can be made aware of the new numbers.

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Please mark my answer as correct if this solves your issues!

If it helped you in any way then please mark helpful!

Thanks and regards,

Kartik