Last Updated on October 29, 2023 by maximosecrets

In the Service Requests application, you may find that the first button in the toolbar is a pencil icon, this enables editing of the record. If you do have a blue pencil button, then the fields in the application will be read-only.

Edit Mode can be enabled on an application if the same record is likely to be updated by different users at the same time. The Service Requests application is probably the most likely of all Maximo applications where this could be the case. As an administrator, you would know if your users were trying to update the same record, because one of them would be receiving the error message – “BMXAA4200E – Record has been updated by another user”, and they would be asking you why this was happening.

You can enable edit mode from the Application Designer application once the application has been loaded. The Edit Mode Enabled check box can be enabled/disabled as required.

If you have an edit mode enabled application and you try to perform an action without first going into edit mode you will receive an error message something like “BMXAA8973E – Your credentials do not have rights to edit this document (SR : Class=SR Service Request=1273). Turn on edit mode, or contact your administrator to continue.”.

The pencil icon in the toolbar on the Service Requests application will allow you to go into edit mode for the record. It changes the toolbar button to a green pencil with a border. Notice many of the fields can now be edited, they are no longer read-only. This remains until you use the Release Edit Mode button (pencil icon). The pencil button therefore just toggles on/off edit mode for the record. The Next Record and Previous Record buttons will also toggle off edit mode, as would returning to the List tab of the application.

From the List tab of the application there is a rather faint symbol next to the service requests which are in edit mode. If you hover over the symbol, you’ll see who is currently editing the record – “User Mike Wilson is editing the record”. I am logged in as Tony Redding on another browser, Tony will not be able to go into Edit Mode for service request 1273 until Mike Wilson has released it.

To see this, you have to be logged-in on a second browser session. Remember, returning to the List tab will release edit mode.

If you find that a record seems to have got stuck in Edit Mode, there is an application called Record Release found in the Administration module. Here you can filter for the record by the application’s main object and name of user, there should only be one record, then you can select it and use the Release Edit Mode button. The padlock button at the end of the row does this in one action. 

You cannot filter by the Service Request number (TICKETID) as the record uses the internal record number for the objects, you tend not to be able to see these in Maximo applications. 

Be careful how you use this, as if Mike Wilson was in the middle of writing War and Peace in the Details (long description) of the Service Request then when he comes to save he will be returned to the error we saw before “BMXAA8973E – Your credentials do not have rights to edit this document (SR : Class=SR Service Request=1273). Turn on edit mode, or contact your administrator to continue.” He might be able to copy the text he was writing, but it is likely he will lose some of the changes he was going to make. 

Save often, it does not pull you out of Edit Mode.