Issue during changing type from Duration type to choice type

[_bhishek]

I had to change the type for one field from duration to choice .We can not change directly the type from duration to choice .So i created one temporary field and stored existing data in that field .

Then created a new update set.

After that  i deleted the current duration field and added new field with choice type with same column name which i had for duration to avoid other related issues. I was able to do this in lower instance but when i am moving update set , I am getting error like type conversion is not allowed from duration to choice for this column name. What should i do now . Please help ,do i need to move deletion in separate update set if yes then how should i capture deletion now in lower instance (moving the changes from DEV TO TEST ,i have duration field available in STAGE and PROD now).When checking the versions in DEV for newly created choice type field dictionary  (previously i had same column name duration field), I can see deletion is captured and on same field insert/update is captured  and type changed. Please suggest me the way to rectify the error in update set in TEST instance also how can fix and move the newly created field in TEST and remove duration field in TEST.

Thanks

[Zach Koch]

It is not recommended to change the type of a field that is in use, per ServiceNow's best practices. They recommend creating a whole new field with the needed type and map data over accordingly if needed. Changing it directly can have a lot of unintended consequences. Here is a KB article to further elaborate on this

KB0712394  

[_bhishek]

Thanks for your response Zach.

I agree with you .This was the reason i deleted previous duration type field and created a new choice field .I created new choice with same column name and captured these changes in 1 update set. i was able to do this in DEV instance.

But when moving update set from DEV to test i am getting error like type is not allowed and I am not able to create field in TEST instance.

Is there any suggestion on this.

When 

[Zach Koch]

What error are you seeing? And rather than deleting the old field, normally SN recommends you just deactivate it, as if anything is relying on that data anywhere, it will break without it.

[_bhishek]

While previewing update set ,I am getting error like Type conversion is not allowed from Duration to Choice.Although in DEV instance i deleted earlier duration field and created new field with same column name with choice type.

I deleted earlier duration field because I had to create new field with same column name and if i will just deactivate the earlier field ,I could not create field with same column name .

Thanks.