Label changes at child table changing parent table label

[Sashi K1]

Team

It has come to my notice multiple times across versions of ServiceNow that if we make changes to a child tables field, parent table overriden field label getting changed.

Say for example you have 'Name' field across cmdb_ci and cmdb_ci_server table. If you change the label of cmdb_ci_server.name to 'Server Name', I have seen parent table name getting changed to 'Server Name'. Another example Description/ShortDescription. We can't reproduce it. It was not consistent across instances. It happens very randomly which we cannot reproduce.

When reported to ServiceNow over Hi, they couldn't find a root cause for the issue. They could see the changes by same developer but they didn't know why parent label got changed. SN wants a quick report of the issue to see what happened in the transaction logs. Issue couldn't reported quickly as developer only concentrates on unit testing area of change but couldn't verify all parent tables for a label change. Since issue is not consistent, someone realizes in a later time when parent label found to be modified by a developer.

I have seen this issue across year across multiple clients.

Anyone has seen this problem or knew a fix/workaround, or reported to Servicenow please share your findings.

[reginabautista]

Hi Chuck, will do! Thanks for the reply

[Vamsi Saladi]

I got this similar issue happened recently, we have a field(custom) on CMDB which is inherited to many child tables.
The dictionary record has labels, for controlling the hint and help text individually.
I removed a hint from a label record(sys_documentaion) and all the child and parent labels have got changed/updated. 
there is version history for my hint removal and the XMP payload had correct label, but form and record shows updated label but not in version XML.
I want Servicenow to look fast to see logs. but as usual the started responding a day after I raised a ticket. And they used 2 days to prove that an year ago version update changed this even after a screen share session of explaining.
And i think after 3 days the system logs will be cleared, so i think this will go unsolved and wil get som rubbish resolution. 

[VaranAwesomenow]

It depends on the table in question, CMDB tables are different from task tables.

CMDB tables have columns duplicated at each child level, where as for tasks it doesnt duplicate the fields, hence if label change is done at dictionary level it applies to all child tables.

But if goal is to keep labels separate for each child table below link has instructions

https://docs.servicenow.com/en-US/bundle/tokyo-platform-administration/page/use/reporting/task/t_RelabelAColumn.html

Its important to note that when updating labels it needs to be done in correct application scope for example to update case field labels user should be in sn_customerservice scope.