Incidents Assigned to Users Under a Manager – Archived Users Not Included

[harshavshetty]

Question:

I am trying to retrieve a list of Incidents assigned to users whose manager is a specific person (example: Abel).

Abel has two users reporting to him: ITIL User1 and ITIL User2. When I filter incidents using the manager field (Assigned to → Manager → Abel), only incidents assigned to ITIL User1 are returned. Incidents assigned to ITIL User2 are missing.

We identified that ITIL User2 is an archived user. For archived users, the manager field is stored as a string instead of a reference (sys_id). Because of this, filtering by manager sys_id does not return incidents assigned to archived users.

We attempted to use Manager.name instead of the manager sys_id, but this is not consistent.

Is there a way to generate a report that includes incidents assigned to both active and archived users under a specific manager?

Thank you in advance

[Matthew_13]

Hi Buddy,

When a user is archived, the manager field is no longer stored as a reference (sys_id) and is instead stored as a string value. Because of that, reports that filter on Assigned to → Manager = Abel only return incidents for active users. Incidents assigned to archived users are skipped since the reference match no longer works.

Unfortunately, there isn’t a reliable way to build a single report condition that works cleanly for both:

• active users (manager as a reference), and

• archived users (manager as a string).

Using Manager.name or display values is inconsistent and not recommended for long-term reporting.

The correct long-term solution is to adjust user archiving:

• Configure the user archive rule to retain references so fields like manager keep their sys_id when users are archived.

• For users already archived, run the archive reference migration so their manager references are preserved.

Once references are retained, your report condition Assigned to → Manager = Abel will include incidents for both active and archived users.

If changing the archive configuration isn’t an option right now, there’s no fully reliable reporting workaround—this is a limitation of how archived reference fields are stored.

@harshavshetty - Please mark Solution Accepted and Thumbs Up if you found Helpful 🙂