My pleasure Alison... But wait, there's more! Since your CEO wants to
use the Request Description for its intended purpose (which I agree
with), you can still leverage the same approach: just create a
Issue-based custom form with one custom text parameter on it (e.g.
"First Update"), save it, then add the First Update column to the new
Issue view (which will automatically attach the form to the Request the
first time data is entered into the First Update column), and adjust the
formula to refer ...