Mapping Fields from Customised Forms

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Introduction When creating customised forms, and custom questions the default behaviour is for the question and answer to be visible on the request form in a Questions collapsable section. It is also possible to map the answer from a custom question to one of the default fields on a request.

Related Articles Customised forms

Field ID

When creating a custom question on a customised form, each question will require a Field ID to be specified, 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 field you have specified.

Available Fields to Map to

To map a custom form answer to one of the supported database columns, the form field ID need to be set using the following format h_custom_a or appropriate column you would like to map to. The table below lists all the database fields 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/10,000 characters (approximately)	The description field of 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/10,000 characters (approximately)	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 YYYY-MM-dd HH:mm:ss	DATETIME custom fields 21 - 25 each suitable for holding a single date-time stamp YYYY-MM-dd HH:mm:ss. This should be used in conjunction with a date-time picker.
h_custom_26 - h_custom_30	INTEGER/any whole number	DATETIME custom fields 26 - 30 each suitable for holding whole numbers

When custom questions have been mapped to a default request field, the question and answer are still available in the Questions section on a request as well as the default fields mapped too.

• This will allow for the original answer to be retained
• The default fields values can be changed once logged

Considerations

• When specifying the field you wish to map to in your custom form id, this value is case sensitive. e.g. h_summary will acheive the desired mapping but h_Summary will fail to pull any values through. Ensure that the mapped field is written in lower case.
• 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, 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.

Using Custom Questions and Answers in Email Templates & Measures

If you have a requirement to include the answers to custom questions in email templates within your business process, it is now possible to utilise the above mapping to write the answers to the custom questions into default fields which are immediately available to use as variables when creating your email templates.

By using the above mapping to any of the requests custom fields, when creating your email template, simply look for the Extended Information options available from the variables drop down pick list. They will look like this: {{Extended Information.H_custom_x}}. The Extended Information options are listed as 1 through to 20 and these equate to the custom fields a through to p which you will have mapped to. By selecting the required variable in your email template, this will pass through the answer from your custom question which has been mapped to the corresponding custom field.

• Update - From Service Manager 2.41 mapped answers are also written to the custom columns in the primary h_itsm_requests table (custom a-p), this will allow the custom fields to be used when defining email template variables using the available custom fields, and also as criteria when creating measures in the Advanced Analytics. This update only applies to data in mapped fields for requests logged after the release of Service Manager 2.41. The mapped answers are still also mapped to the above Extended Information table.