Updating Choices in Scoped Applications

[Niels Aksel]

Hi guys,

When I make updates to choice values in a scoped application (label, sequence etc.) - I'm not able to move these changes to our test environment

I use studio to publish the changes to the application repository from our development environment, but when updating the application on our test environment, updates to choices are not included (new choices are included)

what to do?

[Brad Tilton]

Scoped applications will not propagate any record deletions to the target instance, which can be problematic in some cases like choice lists. However, this changes in London where inactive choices are now propagated to the target instance. Pre-London you'll need to manage that manually.

[Niels Aksel]

Hi Brad,

I'm actually not deleting any choices. I'm updating the labels / sequence. 

If these changes are not moved across, what is the best practice then to do? update the choice values manually on test and production?

[Brad Tilton · Accepted solution]

Sorry I should have said inactive choices. This is from the upgrade docs:

Before this release, inactive choice values (sys_choice inactive attribute = true) were not included in table definitions when you published an application. For example, if a choice set contained Red, White, and Blue choices, but Blue was inactive, only Red and White would be included in the table definition.

In addition, ServiceNow plugins did not contain inactive choices in table definitions.

Starting in this release, table definitions include inactive choices when you publish applications. When you install or upgrade a published application, the inactive choices load into the client table. Two new system properties (com.snc.apps.publish.include_inactive_choices and glide.db.table.update_inactive_choices_enabled), which by default, are set to true, control the behavior of publishing applications and the behavior of installing applications. ServiceNow plugins also include inactive choices in table definitions.

Since the changes would not move over you'd need to either do an xml export/import or do it manually.

[Niels Aksel]

Thanks Brad

Its only a few updates (this time) - we will update the label values manually in test and production