Creating a custom HTML Task Description field

This is the apparently less wrong alternative to Changing the Task description into an HTML field.

You create a new “u_html_description” field. You hide the out of the box “description” and you live happily ever after. Right?

Not so fast!

There will still be issues:

  • Many customizations will still be required: Find and evaluate if you need to replace any reference in the system to the out of the box field by your custom one.
  • Do you have Record Producers with some variable named “description”? Make sure you map them to the new field.
  • In the Service portal, you will be changing out of the box widgets. Some of them are read-only. You might need to make a copy. Another thing to check in your subsequent upgrades!
  • There are places in the system where you won’t even have that chance. The system will show the out of the box “description” field and you can do nothing about it. You are stuck with “description” (e.g. VTB Card details). What will you do about it? Will you keep both fields synchronised? Will you escape the values?
  • Did you know that Planned Task [planned_task] already has its own HTML field? If you create a custom one in the Task table, you will have 3 description fields to maintain in your Releases, Products and Stories!