Winston - what has happened is that in 1.7 (or 1.6) you made a change to the product archetypes to change the description field from being read-only (its standard setting) to not read-only. When you did the 1.7.1 (or 1.7) install all the archetypes were set to their standard settings, and you have not applied any changes you made - hence you lost the 'can edit description field' facility.

Here is part of the standard product.medication.adl file

<archetypes>
    <archetype name="product.medication.1.0" latest="true"
               type="org.openvpms.component.business.domain.im.product.Product" displayName="Medication">
        <node name="id" path="/id"
              type="java.lang.Long" readOnly="true"/>
        <node name="name" path="/name" type="java.lang.String" minCardinality="1">
            <assertion name="propercase"/>
        </node>
        <node name="description" type="java.lang.String"
              path="/description" hidden="true" derived="true"
              derivedValue="/name"/>
        <node name="printedName" path="/details/printedName" type="java.lang.String"
              minCardinality="0"/>

Here is the version we use - note that the description field is no longer read-only, it is not a derived field, and its title is "Description/Notes"

<archetypes>
    <archetype name="product.medication.1.0" latest="true"
               type="org.openvpms.component.business.domain.im.product.Product" displayName="Medication">
        <node name="id" path="/id"
              type="java.lang.Long" readOnly="true"/>
        <node name="name" path="/name" type="java.lang.String" minCardinality="1">
            <assertion name="propercase"/>
        </node>
        <node name="description" type="java.lang.String" displayName="Description/Notes"
              path="/description" />
        <node name="printedName" path="/details/printedName" type="java.lang.String"
              minCardinality="0"/>

So the fix is for you to edit the product.xxx.adl files (where xxx is medication, merchandise, and service) [found in <OPENVPMS-HOME>\update\archetypes\org\openvpms\archetype\product ] as above, save the updated files somewhere, and then use Administration|Archetypes|Import to import them.

Note that when you install the next version (1.8), you will need to repeat the process. We have some 30 modified archetypes which I keep in a special folder. When a new version is installed, I compare these with the new standard archetypes and update our modified ones as necessary and then import all our modified ones.

The CSH text at http://www.openvpms.org/documentation/csh/1.7/admin/archetype is worth reading.

Regards, Tim G