Adding another choice for STATUS on Project task form

PaulaaO · ‎03-22-2024

Hi Community,

I have the following requirement from my portfolio stakeholders: add another choice in the status field from Project Task form called Complete and to appear against Blue colour when reviewed on Planning Console (Classic or New Project Workspace) or in the Project Task list of records.

I wanted to ask first whether this is something we should customise at all or leave alone.

If we can proceed and customise this, what is the best approach and what are the relevant components that need updating/creating for this to work, without impacting the current behaviour of the field, given that as per the documentation "it updates automatically based on the difference of the planned end date of the task from the current date".?

The status would change to this new choice whenever the State would become one of the Closed values (Closed Complete, Closed Incomplete, Closed Skipped).

I assume I will need to create a Business Rule for this as well, however my main concern is how to address this whilst maintaining most of the current behaviour of this field.

Any suggestions would be highly appreciated.

Thank you.

Paula

PaulaaO · ‎03-28-2024

Wanted to add this in case someone might have similar requirement - in the end I have reached out to one of our contacts from ServiceNow who is also a Principal Product Success Architect for this area and they advised against this change we wanted to do.

Few of the arguments they provided are:

the status and state have different meaning and no relation. For example, the project task is complete but the status is Red (based on the latest situation of the task) indicating that the project task was completed with challenges. This information is important for project managers, reporting and learning from previous projects (and project tasks) to avoid the same Risks/Issues or apply similar actions to mitigate/resolve (if using RIDAC to manage Risks, Issues and Actions).
you would need to apply changes/customizations in many places, here are some examples:
- Create a new choice at the Project task table
- A business rule to update the status field when the project task is complete. What happens if the project task is re-opened?
- Update Field formatting for lists
there is no guarantee that you won’t impact SPM upgrades
there are other areas I’m not sure you will be able to change, for example: colour coding from New Project Workspace

View solution in original post

TacParham · ‎03-25-2024

Now I'm even more confused on the difference is between customization and configuration.

PaulaaO · ‎03-25-2024

@TacParham the link provided by Neel is quite useful if you want the exact definition from SN pov; that link will also take you to quite an old article, but I think it's still valid -> ServiceNow Definition of Customization and Configu... - ServiceNow Community

The way I understand it and apply it: if the changes I do get recorded as a customer update on that specific record and additional upgrades by SN are skipped, it's a customisation. I might be wrong but that's how I managed to get my head around it 🙂

Neel Patel3 · ‎03-25-2024

On any particular point?

Community Alums · ‎03-22-2024

Hey Neel,

As an IT PM, I'm currently working on enhancing our demand process. A few of my stakeholders have expressed interest in creating new forms or making similar changes to the planning console, as described by PaulaaO. I've heard that modifying forms or the workspace is seen as customization, and in my situation, it requires creating user stories and going through the a whole process to implement the customization.

Is there any documentation available to help me, as the project manager, understand the difference between configuration and customization? In the past, my stakeholders requested a modification exaly like what PaulaaO mentioned. However, it was tabled because we were told that it was considered a customization.

Neel Patel · ‎03-22-2024

Check this for what is a configuration vs customization.