Daily Archives: June 3, 2008

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

June 3, 2008

Posted under

Service Desk Express

Comments

6 Comments

The Curse of the Severity Message Box

I guess one of the clever features of Service Desk Express is its ability to calculate the Due Date for a ticket based on its Urgency (or even Priority in version 9.6). If the Urgency of a ticket changes during its lifecycle Service Desk Express needs to know what rules to apply for the recalculation of the Due Date.

Enter “The Curse of the Severity Message Box.”

So, I am guessing everyone is familiar with this popup message that appears when the Urgency changes:

Standard Severity Message Box

So the problem is that this message box is not configurable and if your delightful colleagues don’t change the selector and just click OK then the due date is left as it was – which in the case of when there isn’t a due date populated then that means there is still no due date!

So I thought I would post a couple of hacks that might help if this issue is causing your organisation pain. The result of all the hacks (which don’t have to all be applied) looks like this:

Modified Severity Message Box

The results of this are:

  • The users can only choose Recalculate Due Date based on Open Date.
  • The Cancel button is disabled.

I believe this is what is called a “Belt and Braces” approach 🙂

You are about to hack an HTML page and as such I would stongly suggest you make a back up of it!

All the hacks are applied to one file so open C:Program FilesBMCService Desk ExpressApplication Serverhtmlseveritymsgbox.htm in Notepad.

Default to Something Other Than “Do Not Recalculate Due Date”

Find:

<input CLASS="InputLabel" checked type=radio ID="radio1" NAME="radio" STYLE="BORDER-BOTTOM: none; WIDTH: 20px;" >

Replace With:

<input CLASS="InputLabel" type=radio ID="radio1" NAME="radio" STYLE="BORDER-BOTTOM: none; WIDTH: 20px;" disabled>

This will remove the current default AND disable this radio button. I you don’t want to disable it, just remove the word “disabled” above.

Find:

<input CLASS="InputLabel" type=radio ID="radio2" NAME="radio" STYLE="BORDER-BOTTOM: none; WIDTH: 20px;" >

Replace With:

<input CLASS="InputLabel" checked type=radio ID="radio2" NAME="radio" STYLE="BORDER-BOTTOM: none; WIDTH: 20px;" >

The word “checked” will cause this radio button (“Recalculate Due Date based on Open Date”) to be selected by default.

Find:

<input CLASS="InputLabel" type=radio ID="radio3" NAME="radio" STYLE="BORDER-BOTTOM: none; WIDTH: 20px;" >

Replace With:

<input CLASS="InputLabel" type=radio ID="radio3" NAME="radio" STYLE="BORDER-BOTTOM: none; WIDTH: 20px;" disabled>

This will disable this radio button. I you don’t want to disable it, just remove the word “disabled” above.

Disabling the Cancel button

Find:

<button CLASS="InputButton" TITLE=MGC_PL_LABEL_10 id="CANCEL" name="CANCEL" ONCLICK="window.close()" oonMouseOut="style.color='black'" oONMOUSEOVER="style.color='white'" STYLE="width:100%;cursor:hand;" MGC_PL_LABEL=10></button>

Replace With:

<button CLASS="InputButton" TITLE=MGC_PL_LABEL_10 id="CANCEL" name="CANCEL" ONCLICK="window.close()" disabled oonMouseOut="style.color='black'" oONMOUSEOVER="style.color='white'" STYLE="width:100%;cursor:hand;" MGC_PL_LABEL=10></button>

When your done applying all your changes, save the file and you should be good to go.

Hope this helps. As always, comments (positive and negative) always appreciated.