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INDEX

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Have questions about this site?

What is this site?

  • This website is Hornbill's new product documentation website and is currently under development.
  • It is intended that all existing and future public-facing documentation we produce will be available to search, browse and share.
  • Hornbill's current documentation is available at Hornbill Wiki but over time this content will be migrated to this documentation site.
  • Please feel free to have a look around at any time.

Why has Hornbill created this site?

  • Hornbill's products have moved on considerably since we introduced it almost 10 years ago. At the time, the MediaWiki tool was sufficient, but we have outgrown it.
  • Our customers are more enterprise focused and more self-sufficient than ever before, so for 2023 and beyond we have established a new documentation platform and team to drive our documentation initiative forwards.
  • We are aiming to deprecate the use of Hornbill Wiki for most Hornbill related documentation.
  • We want to enable our growing partner network with product resources and information, documentation beyond our Wiki approach is required.
  • We could definitely do with some help, and may even pay for some! If you have domain knowledge and would like to help, please check out our Hornbill Docs Contributor Guide and contact the Hornbill docs team at docs@hornbill.com.

What will this site be good for?

  • Community contribution will be facilitated, encouraged, and most welcome.
  • High quality documentation, will be kept up to date as rapidly as our products evolve.
  • Real-time content search and discovery.
  • Articles organized into books, books into libraries, creating a more natural and logical structure to our documentation.
  • Legacy API documentation and various other documentation sources will all be consolidated into a single unified documentation system.
  • Documentation available in browser as well as printable/viewable as PDF on demand.
  • Personalized documentation experience, allowing dark/light mode, article subscriptions, social media sharing and other useful features.
  • Almost all publicly available documentation on docs.hornbill.com will be open-source and available to fork on GitHub, allowing customers to derive their own custom documentation around Hornbill products should they wish to.

What is the timeline for this site?

  • We have taken the decision to publish and make available early, there is very little content at this time.
  • As and when we have completed/usable documentation, it will be published here.
  • We have a host of additional features we wish to add over time, so please watch this space.
  • We expect most of our existing documentation should be reviewed/migrated to docs.hornbill.com over the coming months.
  • The documentation project will be ongoing, will continue to expand, evolve and improve day-by-day.

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Mapping Fields from Customized Forms

Any information captured in customized forms results in the question and answer being visible on the request form in a Questions collapsable section. Custom forms also support field mapping which is a mechanism that allows us to write the information to the main request table.

Why would I use field mapping? Field mapping is desirable for two reasons:

  1. Make the answers to custom questions more accessible for reporting (i.e. Measures, Widgets, Reports).
  2. Make the answers to custom questions available in email templates.

The information gathered in a capture custom form is stored in a table h_itsm_questions and is intended to act as a sort of audit history displaying what information was provided at the point the request was logged. Answers in the Questions section of a request can be edited. This option is only available for single-line and multi-line text fields and only for users having “Service Manager Delete Questions” or “Service Desk Admin” roles. Any other type of answer cannot be edited.

The way the data is stored in the table h_itsm_questions does not offer us much flexibility when it comes to reporting and also means is not accessible via the email template variable picker. The exercise of field mapping ensures the data is written to h_itsm_requests (the main request table) which means it is readily available.

Configuring a Custom Field for Mapping

When creating a custom question on a customized form, each question requires a Field ID and it is here that the mapping can be performed. When defining the Field ID, if you use any of the following values, the answer to this question will be mapped to the database column you have specified.

Custom Form Field Settings

Field mapping takes place when a supported database column name is specified as the field ID of a custom field.

Which Database Columns Support Field Mapping?

To map a custom form answer to one of the supported database columns, the form field ID needs to be set using the following format h_custom_a or the appropriate column you would like to map to. The table below lists all the database columns that support field mapping and the type of content that they can hold.

Available Columns Data Type/Capacity Description
h_summary VARCHAR/255 characters The Summary field of a request
h_description TEXT/unlimited* The description field of a request
h_site VARCHAR/64 characters The site field for a request
h_custom_a - h_custom_o VARCHAR/255 characters VARCHAR custom fields a - o each suitable for holding up to 255 characters of any type.
h_custom_p - h_custom_t TEXT/unlimited* TEXT custom fields p - t each suitable for holding large amounts of text characters of any type.
h_custom_21 - h_custom_25 DATETIME/a single date-time stamp DATETIME custom fields 21 - 25 each suitable for holding a single date-time stamp (YYYY-MM-dd HH:mm:ss). These columns should ONLY be used in conjunction with a date-time picker.
h_custom_26 - h_custom_30 INTEGER/any whole number INTEGER custom fields 26 - 30 each suitable for holding whole numbers. When mapping to these columns, ensure the following RegEx is specified in your Custom field settings: [0-9]
Note: Phone numbers are not Integers, do not use these fields to store phone numbers.
h_custom_31 - h_custom_40 TEXT/unlimited* TEXT custom fields 31 - 40 each suitable for holding large amounts of text characters of any type.
h_backout_plan Text/Unlimited* The Back Out Plan of a Change or Release Request
h_support_plan Text/Unlimited* The Support Plan of a Change or Relase Request
h_communication_plan Text/Unlimited* The Communication Plan of a Change or Release Request
h_test_plan Text/Unlimited* The Test Plan of a Change or Release Request
h_implementation_plan Text/Unlimited* The Implementation Plan of a Change or Release Request
h_security_implication Text/Unlimited* The Security Implications of a Change or Release Request
h_change_justification Text/Unlimited* The Change Justification a Change Request
h_release_justification Text/Unlimited* The Change Justification a Release Request
h_disruption_level VarChar/255 Characters The Disruption Level of a Change or Release Request
h_change_category VarChar/100 Characters The Category of a Change Request
h_release_category VarChar/100 Characters The Category of a Release Request
h_proposed_start_time DATETIME/a single date-time stamp The Proposed Start date/time of the a Change or Release Request - (YYYY-MM-dd HH:mm:ss). These columns should ONLY be used in conjunction with a date-time picker
h_proposed_end_time DATETIME/a single date-time stamp The Proposed End date / time of the a Change or Release Request - (YYYY-MM-dd HH:mm:ss). These columns should ONLY be used in conjunction with a date-time picker
h_workaround Text/Unlimited* The Workaround for a Problem or Known Error record
h_change_type VarChar/128 Characters A simple list (changeRequestType) is used to select the change type when manually selecting the type. Values used when mapping should match those in the simple list
h_release_type VarChar/128 Characters A simple list (releaseRequestType) is used to select the release type when manually selecting the type. Values used when mapping should match those in the simple list

unlimited* - TEXT fields have a maximum capacity of 65000 characters.

Considerations

  • When specifying the column you wish to map to in your custom form id, this value is case sensitive. e.g. h_summary will achieve the desired mapping but h_Summary will fail to pull any values through. Ensure that the mapped value is written in lowercase.
  • When the option of value/display is offered (e.g. in a static drop-down list) it is the display value that will be mapped to the column.
  • Do not store Telephone Numbers in Integer fields. At best you will lose the initial ‘0’, even more likely is that the value will exceed the maximum allowed for an Integer and the operation will fail.
  • If the Default Request Details form is used in your progressive capture flow, and you try to map to h_summary or h_description, the values will not overwrite or be written to the summary or description fields i.e. the standard “Request Details” form takes precedence, but the custom questions and answers will still be written to the Questions section on the request.
  • If the same mapping is used on different custom forms in your progressive capture flow, the first mapping will be written to the specified default field on the request, and any subsequent mapping to the same field will not overwrite this value, but will be written to the Questions section on the request.
  • When custom questions have been mapped, the question and answer are still available in the Questions section on a request as well as now being available in the mapped field. This restriction can be controlled via the application setting “guest.itsm.progressiveCapture.overwriteCustomFieldValue”.
  • Once you have configured field mapping in your progressive capture custom forms, you may need to expose the mapped field on the request. See the Request Details Form Designer for more information.
  • When creating your email template simply look for the custom options available from the variables drop-down pick list. Selecting the required variable in your email template, will pass through the answer from your custom question which has been mapped to the corresponding custom field.
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