Created a new COE - Unexpected Behavior

[Ryan Harringto1]

Hello everyone, hopefully someone out there knows the answer to these questions....

Background: 

We had a need to create a custom COE in our HRSD application within our Kingston instance. This is a brand new instance so we have nothing to worry about in terms of old configurations. We spun up a Kingston instance and activated the HR plugins, that's it.

What was done: 

So, in order to create the new custom COE we followed ServiceNow's directions based on their documentation (the note at the bottom here: https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/kingston-hr-service-delivery/page/product/human-resources/task/t_...)

Now, this worked for the most part, and we didn't notice that it didn't work entirely for awhile. The new COE was created, we have built services and templates and record producers all related to this and tested a lot of case creations. No problem.

Issues we've found so far: 

It appears that there are a number of things that are functioning differently than the out-of-box COEs...

1.) Delete button showing on case form

So is one thing we noticed... On all case forms EXCEPT where the COE is our new custom one extended from the base table, the delete button will only show up for users with the admin or hradmin role. So on our case forms with our custom COE, the delete button is showing when it shouldn't.

(issue-1.png)

2.)

Worknotes entered from the case form are not saving into the activity log on all cases in this custom COE. Even worse, they are actually populating the caller chat window on the portal with the work notes allowing these work notes to be customer visible. Huge issue here. All other COE's function properly EXCEPT for this custom COE.

(issue-2.png)

3.)

Finally, on the custom COE case forms sometimes a random list of tasks show up even though they are no where to be found on the form layout, design, or related lists.

(issue-3.png)

4.)

We've only noted these 3 issues so far but we just started noticing these differences between out-of-box COE and custom created COE today. I predict there are more out there we haven't found yet.

My Questions: 

Here are a list of questions I have....

Why does my custom COE behave differently than the rest when all the documentation says I have to do is extend the base case table? Am I missing certain steps involved with a custom COE creation?

Have any of you experienced a similar scenario when creating and using a custom COE?

Any advice on how to remediate these issues, specifically issue #2 (biggest issue right now)?

Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks for taking the time to read this.

[_ _ _ _]

1) This could be an ACL issue where a "Delete" ACL may be needed for the new COE.

2) This could be an ACL issue for Read/Write Access to the work_notes/comments fields.

3) This looks to be a list of children tasks. Is the "parent" field on these records set to the current HR Case?

For 1 and 2, you could review the ACLs for the new COE and compare to the parent table's ACLs. For 3, this could be a HR Service setup issue if the "parent" field is linking to the current HR Case.

[Ryan Harringto1]

Here's an update on what I've done...

1 & 2 --

First I looked into ACLs and I found that each OOB COE had 5 ACLs that utilized scripts in the advanced section. Then I noticed that my custom COE table only had 4 ACLs that did not include the same scripts the other COE ACLs were using. So, I disabled the 4 ACLs that came with my custom COE table, extended from the base sn_hr_core_case table, and I then created 5 'clones' of the OOB COE ACLs for my table. Doing this has fixed the issue with the 'Delete' button at the top of the form but the worknote and comment issue are still existing without change.

3 --

Also, none of the cases in our instance have a parent associated with them so unfortunately this is not the case. This is not a very repeatable error, it seems to happen at random where the list pops up. 90% of the time opening a case form of my custom COE will not produce this list in the middle of the form, but every now and then it does.

Issue 1 : Fixed

Issue 2 : Still a problem

Issue 3 : Still a problem

[katiekalina · Accepted solution]

#2 - Verify that your new COE table has  audited checked.  Check Table record. We had a similar issue with comments not tracking in activity log and this resolved our issue.

#3 - I have seen this in Kingston / London versions - custom tables built in early Kingston version or prior have the Task list in center of form. OOB London seems to have  this behavior on all COEs.

[Ryan Harringto1]

#1 turned out to be an ACL issue where I had to copy all of the out of box COE ACLs.

#2 and #3 you got right. The biggest piece was the work notes and that came down to just auditing the table.

Thanks!