There's some really good documentation by Combodo. And some official examples; but there's a lot more in this repository too on how to accomplish certain things. Never edit the existing files - always create an extension, so your changes are kept if you upgrade iTop. Most useful resources are: https://www.itophub.io/wiki/page?id=latest:customization:xml_reference https://www.itophub.io/wiki/page?id=latest:customization:datamodel#content_of_a_module https://www.itophub.io/wiki/page?id=latest:customization:portal_xml...
What place holder did you use for hyperlink? You might want to use url rather than hyperlink - https://www.itophub.io/wiki/page?id=latest:admin:placeholders As for the description... It is a HTML field. Have you played around with $this->html(description) ?
You could edit the datamodel to set those values by default. But it applies to everyone. You can also do some magic with PHP - PrefillCreationForm .
You're only changing things on the browser side by doing so - not on the server side. I think you may just want to check the settings of your web server about the session length.
You might want to show a bit more of your code, and explain what you're trying to accomplish?
What version are you on? Any reason not to upgrade?
If I'm not mistaken, there was also the ability to specify "ref" instead as well in the URL. Could be wrong though, or it may need a small tweak somehow.
Something else to try. Update the version at the top of the document from 1.0 to 1.7. https://www.itophub.io/wiki/page?id=2_7_0:customization:xml_reference - "if_exists" was introduced in a later version ( 1.3 ) .