How To: Configure the Height/Size of a Request Offering Text Prompt Control?

Introduction

On a request offering form there can be a textarea prompt to capture text input from the user.  In some cases the amount of text expected is pretty short such as a title for a work item, a user name, a computer name, etc.  In those cases it is appropriate to have a single line text prompt which captures the input but doesn't take up a lot of space on the screen.  In other cases, the amount of text captured from the user can be much longer such as a description of an issue, a business justification, etc.  In those cases the size of the text box should be much taller so that the user can see all of the text entered at a glance and not have to scroll up/down through the textbox.

How to Configure the Size of a Text Box Prompt

When you are creating/editing a request offering you can configure the min/max length of a text prompt.  The max length will control the height of the textbox when it is rendered on the form as follows:

  • 1-199 => 1 row
  • 200-499 => 3 rows
  • 500-999 => 5 rows
  • 1000+ => 7 rows

Note: typically most string properties in the SCSM data model have a max length of 256 or 4000 and should never really be longer than 4000.

To configure the request offering text prompt max length do the following:

  • Open the request offering wizard  (if you are creating a new request offering) or the request offering properties dialog (if you are editing an existing request offering).
  • Navigate to the Configure Prompts page/tab.
  • Select the String prompt you want to configure and click the Configure button

4) Check the 'Limit string length' checkbox and specify the Maximum Length

  • Click OK
  • Change any other prompts that you need to
  • Click OK or finish the wizard.

Once the configuration has changed you can either way for the automated update of the service catalog (every 2 hours by default) to happen or you can restart the Cache Builder service.

Examples

Max length = 150 --> 1 line:

Max length = 3000 --> 7 lines

    Â