${task_effective_number} in Paris notifications

[Doug Yorke]

I'm noticing that some notifications have been updated to use ${task_effective_number} instead of ${number}

They seem to work in the same exact way (I get the record number) in preview, and I can't find anything in the documentation to say why this changed.  Just trying to figure out if we need to update notifications to use this new syntax. 

[gml35]

Upgrading to Paris and seeing the same thing.  So you are not seeing any ill effects from this? I'm guessing I should accept the change?

[Doug Yorke]

@gml35 So far the 'Preview' seems to work fine if I use ${task_effective_number} instead of ${number}. 

I opened a ticket with HI late yesterday about this.  They are currently researching which makes me think this was not an intentional change by them.  I also see plenty of OOB notifications where they didn't make this update ...  anyway, I'll post when I find out more from them.    

[Doug Yorke · Accepted solution]

@gml35 @Christine Ekman 

I finally for a reply from HI on Friday about this.  I'm including the full notes below:

Columns task.universal_request & task.task_effective_number are added as part of a new feature delivered in Paris called "Universal Request" which is part of Limited Availability.

ServiceNow Universal Request application is a comprehensive set of features that support cross-departmental Enterprise Service Management (ESM) or Global Business Services (GBS) service delivery models. It helps to deliver seamless experience to employees by unifying their service delivery efforts.

Universal request (universal_request) column will be populated when a task record is part of Universal Request.

• Effective Number (task_effective_number) is the identifying number that has the UR number if the task has a Universal Request associated with it. If it is not associated with a Universal Request, then the Effective Number holds current task number.

It is important to have these columns in the instance as they are referred at multiple places in HR and ITSM code.

If you observe task_effective_number is not reflecting on all notifications, it is only reflecting in ESM notification

Here is the Plugin: /nav_to.do?uri=v_plugin.do?sys_id=com.snc.universal_request_core

Here is the fields which got created as new fields: /nav_to.do?uri=sys_dictionary.do?sys_id=1c8c66e9db6310108f33d9f0ce9619c2%26sysparm_view=advanced

So it doesn't matter either it is ${number} or ${task_effective_number} both reflect same numbers, but for ESM we recommend using task_effective_number.

[xiaix]

Thanks, @Doug Yorke for sharing the HI response!

[Paul Ciarfella]

The bigger the platform gets, the more spaghetti there is... It doesn't help to seed upgrades with unreleased functionality, especially when its causing skipped updates.  We've modified all our incident notifications (as I bet most have) and I saw this too and was scratching my head - asking do I keep or or ignore it??