Pop up came up whenever the comments posted on the RITM

[Vasavi O]

Hi All,

There is one pop up came up whenever the additional comments posted on the RITM that "Comment cannot be viewed by technicians until work begins on the Requested item”. But it should not trigger whenever the comments posted on RITM. 

[Michael Jones -]

There is a business rule that handles this notification called "sc_req_item comment events" on the sc_req_item table - however, this business rule also triggers the assignee events (notifications) when a comment is added. You would need to modify this business rule to change this behavior. This would be a minor customization (changing code in an OOB BR) that would require you to maintain your changes going forward. 

You could either create a copy of the BR and modify the copy (export a copy of the original and then deactivate the OOB one) or you could make your changes directly the OOB BR depending on which direction your organization is taking, regarding customizations. 

ServiceNow has published guidelines that indicate that it is a better practice to modify in place rather than copy, but many choose to continue with the practice of copying. 

In the BR you would just need to comment out line 13:

//gs.addInfoMessage(gs.getMessage('Comment cannot be viewed by technicians until work begins on the Requested Item'));

For reference. :  What are the best practices for customization?  

[Kelly Logan]

I've seen several references to this noting ways to customize the code. 
You know what would be actually helpful though? Explaining what ServiceNow meant this code to do in the first place and why it is being triggered so we could decide if it is useful or not for our specific circumstances. 
It appears to be a simple note to let users know that noone has started work yet. 
So, if this is appearing when it shouldn't, is there a change in *business process* or RITM configuration that could be considered first before jumping in and slashing code? I like to think that's closer to 'best practice'. 

[Michael Ramos]

I haven't found a clear confirmation yet, but based on what I can see in other comments in the community and some other functions OOB, I believe the intent was that Requested Items OOB would be intended to have a Change Task associated with each one. Whether created by a Flow, Workflow, or Execution Plan associated with the Catalog Item.

Agents would then be expected to work Change tasks assigned to their Assignment group or directly to them. If a Change task does not exist on the Requested item, then agents would not have any awareness of the Requested item and have no tasks to perform so they would not see the comments.

Further, if there is a Change task (or multiple) but is in the Pending state, then the Change task is not ready for work yet and is pending some action or information and once the Change task is updated to another state agents can begin or have begun work and will then be able to see the comments.

I don't know if this is all correct and I certainly don't know if I agree with this approach, but this is the intent I have been able to piece together. 

Even when you create a Catalog item with no Flow/Workflow, (as long as its not in a Draft state on insert) the system defaults to populate the Execution plan field with the DEFAULT delivery plan. Which will create two generic tasks by default.