3686569 - Goal item comment character limitation issue in Performance Forms

Symptom

The form subject's goal item comment box shows incorrect number for how many characters are left to enter. When the UI shows that there are several left, upon saving the form it throws a validation error that says the character limit has been breached, while based on character count of applications like MS Word or Notepad, 1000 characters limit hasn't been reached.

"**Goal Name**

Enter 1 to 1,000 characters for Item Comments."

Environment

SAP SuccessFactors Performance & Goals 2511

Reproducing the Issue

Enable Latest Form Experience.
Open a performance form with goal section with comment character limitation (1-1000 characters).
Click on a goal.
Insert a comment that has at least one special character (e.g. &) and is 996-999 character long. (It should be 996-999 characters if there is only one special character to receive the validation error.)
See that the comments character limit shows that there are still usable characters left, but upon saving the form, the error pops up that 1000 character limit has been breached. Also the character counter text shows incorrect number of how many characters are left.

Cause

If the item comments contains special characters like "&", the character count validation may incorrectly overcount the escaped version of the character, leading to an error when trying to save or submit the item.

For security reasons, certain special characters are escaped before being stored in the database. For example, the ampersand character & becomes & during the save process.

Due to a defect in the validation logic, the system is counting the escaped text instead of the original user input. As a result, a single & is counted as five characters (&), leading to an incorrect character length calculation.

Resolution

Engineering team is implementing a fix to ensure that the validation uses the actual visible text before any escaping occurs.

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Workaround

There is no full workaround at the moment. Any input containing special characters may be counted incorrectly.

As a temporary measure, entering fewer characters than the limit can help avoid triggering the validation error and allows the user to proceed to the next step.

Additional information

There is no impact when using bold, italics, bullets, or other rich text formatting. All HTML tags are removed before calculating the character length, so only the actual text is counted. However, due to the current bug, each line break (pressing Enter) is counted as one character.

The following six special characters currently cause inaccurate character counts.

The “Expected Length Count” column shows the correct behavior after the fix, while the “Current Length Count” column reflects the incorrect counts caused by the bug.

Character	Escaped form	Expected Length Count	Current Length Count
\n (line break)		0	1
&	&	1	5
<	<	1	4
>	>	1	4
"	"	1	5
'	'	1	5

The language itself does not affect the character calculation, and there is no issue specific to Greek or other non-Latin scripts.

Each Greek or other non-Latin letter counts as exactly one character in the character limit calculation, the same as English letters.

The fix will be applied to all languages.

Keywords

SuccessFactors, SF, PMGM, Latest Form Experience, performance, issue, goal comment, item comment, character limit, breach, reach, incorrect, count, number, limitation, issue, problem, Enter 1 to 1,000 characters for Item Comments., PMU-26633, special character, &, length calculation, validation error , KBA , LOD-SF-PM-FF , Form Features, RTE, Spell Check, Legal Scan, Print , Known Error

Product