I am not entirely sure where to turn to for this - we are in the process of putting up a production SCSM environment and have customized several forms using the Microsoft Authoring Tool 2012 R2. SCSM CU7 has a much heralded solution for Apply and Die, where you may have a work item open, and another process or user comes behind you, opens, modifies and saves the work item, and leaves you unable to save your changes.

In our test environment, I have customized several of the forms from their defaults in minor ways - and a few that I have not.  The forms I have not modified, such as the default Problem form, work exactly as expected for CU7 - they show the verbose error if you try to save conflicting changes, and they allow you to save non-conflicting changes, give you a yellow bar telling you about the changes, and update the data on apply.  Good stuff!

The modified forms only sort-of apply the fix.  I never see the yellow bar warning me of other non-conflicting changes; I get the verbose error on conflicting changes but not during creation(?? I see this during creation, but it might be workflow related - we have many "during creation" but few "during update" workflows).  I can exit the work item, wait a few minutes, then go in and save the changes later - and at THAT point, if I leave the work item open, another user can go in and change the work item, and both our changes are saved if non-conflicting, or I get the verbose CU7 issue if conflicting. 

I tried creating a customized form for Problem (in the example above) and it immediately acted like the other customized forms.  When I removed that form, it returned to acting like CU7.  So I'm pretty sure the issue is with the references the Authoring Tool is using.   It call version 3079.0 where SCSM tells us the current version is 3079.442.  Easy enough - I changed the version in the XML.  But, the authoring tool won't let me seal the pack because it is referring to a version that it doesn't know about.  I haven't tried finding a different sealing tool yet - that's my next step.

Is anyone else having issues with customized forms not giving you the full CU7 suite of fixes for Apply and Die, and if so, have you had any luck fixing the issue?

And, is Microsoft planning to release updates to the Authoring Tool?

• Edited by Ryan Kolter 10 hours 33 minutes ago

I haven't seen that issue with customized forms, personally. I can tell you that form customizations using the authoring tool are "scripted" updates and don't actually make changes to any DLL or anything like that. When you're customizing a form, the authoring tool "records" what you're doing. It saves that "tape" in a management pack. When you open the form, the console "replays" the "tape", essentially applying your customizations at run-time.

It's possible that there are issues with the "replay" not getting along with the click-apply-and-die fix in UR7, but like I said, I haven't seen it. I'll try it out though to see if I can reproduce what you're describing.

And if you don't mind a shameless plug, I built a solution with a different approach for the form collision problem. It can be applied to any form, including your customized forms (though it will require a little management pack manipulation). The instructions are all included. https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/systemcenter/System-Center-Service-fca7af29

The only major flaw left in my solution is that if you have a collision while you're resolving an existing collision, you'll still get the collision error. I designed a solution for that flaw, I just haven't gotten around to implementing it yet. If you try it out and have any questions about it, let me know :)