Incident state showing -5 (value for pending)

Travers M · ‎11-03-2017

I've run into a bit of an issue with my Incident table and I'm 95% sure it has to do with something that was done in Change Management. I know both extend task and use the same state variable. I moved over an update set last night for Change and during development I never went back and looked at Incident as I wasn't doing anything there so I have no idea when this actually went wacky. Now when I create a new or an incident comes into the system, it's getting a value of -5 in the state field. A new Change Request is entered with the same value so this has to be tied together, I just can't for the life of me figure out where or how. We've used Incident for over 3 years now and it was always entered into the system as New and not a numerical value.

Now I know it says -5 in the field because I don't have pending as a valid choice. If I move it over to be a choice, it does say pending. How does it assign that value when a new incident is created though and is this going to cause me problems on the other side with change if I do get this righted?

Chuck Tomasi · ‎11-03-2017

If you change it on the dictionary entry for task.state (as shown above) all task tables will get that as a default value. It may not be an appropriate value for all task states. 1 may be New for change, but Awaiting assignment for Incident, and nothing for a requested item.

I encourage you to change the table specific default state values using the Dictionary Overrides related list at the bottom to set the default value for each table separately (even if they are the same value.)

Dictionary overrides

View solution in original post

Chuck Tomasi · ‎11-03-2017

When you see a numeric (often times blue rather than black) state, it indicates that the record contains a value that is no longer valid in the choice list. I suspect you modified the task.state values and impacted all child tables, rather than modfiying them at the specific tables (change_request, incident, etc.)

You'll want to go in to Incident, right click on the State field and configure choices so -5 has a value of Pending.

Travers M · ‎11-03-2017

I have changed that so it does get the label so it's not as ugly. The really pressing problem is, why are my incidents now starting with that value when it was always New in the past? I didn't touch anything related to state during development, just started using Change. It's like Change has now trumped it and the new guy makes the rules. Is this a business rule or something?

When I click to create a new incident anywhere it's giving me that state of pending. I don't want that at all. I guess the simple but probably not recommended thing to do here would be to change that label on the -5 pending to be New. I foresee that causing more problems than it fixes as I hate doing anything at the task level.

Should I put in a ticket with HI?

Chuck Tomasi · ‎11-03-2017

What is the default value on the dictionary entry for task.state?

Are there any dictionary overrides in the related lists that are available to the incident table to set it's own default value?

Travers M · ‎11-03-2017

Just as you post that, I find the culprit. There really wouldn't be harm in changing this to 1 as opposed to -5, right? It was changed in sub production and all looks right, I just don't want it to bite me later

I just don't know where that came from or how it just surfaced. Would activating a plug in in dev potentially update this? I know this wasn't a record we touched and that's why I am super confused here. Thank you so much for all your help. You've diffused my utter panic this morning