Posting

Posting is the process of copying data from a source record to a target record. The purpose of posting is to update similar fields in other records without having to open those records to modify each field. The relationship between the two records is normally based on a value defined in one (or more) of the source record input fields. Posting is the opposite of the Fill function, which copies data from the target record to the source record. You can use posting to update Service Management tables from another part of Service Management.

Posting does the following:

• Starts on a source record.
• Accesses a record in a secondary (target) table, based on data in that record.
• Copies (posts) data from the source to the target, and then performs some action (for example, add, update, or open) on the target record.

The posting process enables you to control the process in several ways:

• Define the target table.
• Select the fields to copy.
• Determine whether to prompt the user for add/update confirmation.
• Decide which application to invoke for the posting process.
• Define manual or automatic posting.

Note: Do not post to the probsummary table or to incident records. The record being updated may be locked by another user and the post will not occur. In addition, the pm.eval.alerts application will create its own $file variable, which conflicts with the $file variable that post.fc is using. Updating the probsummary table triggers an application that cleans out the $file variable, the same variable that is used by the Format Control routines.