Getting around character limit in Service Description

[Mark Hylton]

Getting around character limit in Service Description

Hello,

       We are looking to create an index to help point our customers to the correct service or self help how-to article for resetting passwords from various applications. Most applications use the same password reset service but there are a number that have their own service for resetting passwords. We created a non-orderable service that uses a table structure in the service description and we are listing the individual applications in one of the table columns. The problem we're facing is we're limited to 4,000 characters in the service description field(using RC 2005.3.4). Any ideas on a way to work around this? We played with the idea of linking to a separate html file but we're trying to reduce the number of clicks a customer has to make to get to the right service. I'll attach an image of what we're currenty developing. Thanks in advance for any input. 

[Bill Fine Bill Fine]

You may want to consider using a Category for this, putting the attached table in the Category presentation.

[Tylor Hagerman]

The problem with using a category is that is that (I'm pretty sure at least) it won't be found in search results.  For situations like this I use a non-orderable service and put all of the details like your table in the HTML presentation area.  The user would have to click on the name of the service to see the results though.  Another thing I do in this type of situation is to host the HTML data outside of RC and include it using the "Content URL" for the Presentation Overview.  The u

[Mark Hylton]

Thanks for the replies. Tylor what you discussed regarding categories not being searchable is correct, at least we haven't found a way to make them searchable yet. Hosting the html data ouside of RC and including it using the Content URL in the Presentation is what we currently do for our self help how-to articles...we may end up going that route for this index as well. Thanks for the thoughts!

[Emir E]

put it in the More Details section

(Oracle DB = CLOB)

[Mark Hylton]

Hello all,

we're testing hosting the html page elsewhere and using an iframe to embed it. So far we have seen issues where the connection to the source is lost, we believe this will be remedied by placing the html file on the same server  RequestCenter resides on. Has anyone else done anything similar and what if any performance issues have you encountered?

[James Fuller]

The difficulty with putting this in the More Details is that it would require an extra click by the user to see it.  Being able to navigate through the catalog and see the detail would likely be the best bet.

I would think the iFrame is the best option here.  Use an unorderable service and put the iFrame in the presentation section.  It would be searchable by service name and the iFrame wouldn't have a limitation to what was visible to the user.