We have upgraded to ServiceDesk Plus 9.0 (Enterprise) and are pleased to find that much of the functionality we had been obtaining through custom field configuration is now default functionality available through built-in fields (e.g. Change Roles, Change Closure Codes, Status Comments).

As a result, we no longer need to assign six of the 'Change - Additional Fields' for these purposes and would like to remove them from the Change templates.  In order to do this, however, we need to ensure the integrity of the information they contained during the change lifecycle is maintained in the Change History.

A couple questions:

1. If we remove the custom fields from the Change templates, will the history retain a log of the values they had been assigned?  
   
   
   
2. We would like to eventually reassign these custom fields to other purposes, which we realize will be confusing (as the new label for the custom field will not match the history of the field contents).  How do we script the insertion of a Note (sort of a Note to File to explain the custom field retirement as of a certain date) to all Change Records simultaneously?  (We want to make sure the same Note appears in all Change Records as of a certain date and not cause any data errors or loose ends in related tables or the interface.)

Much appreciated.