Transform Map Coalesce Fields not Applied post Zurich

[MitchL]

We have a weekly transform map that has decided to break one day after updating to Zurich. We have the coalesce fields set to include "assigned_to" but when you check the activity stream of the records created they would jump from one user to another. (it also seems to have broken how we interpret which user, in the past it would give just it to "John Doe" it now creates a new "John.Doe" user record and assigns it to them)

We're receiving this warning on our import sets:

More than one target records exists for target table sn_grc_task with query cmdb_ci=61c1dcaf4759721085758e0b516d43cf^active=true^u_category=training

However, this query doesn't include "assigned_to" which is an enabled coalesce field

Additionally, validating the coalesce fields on the transform map fails even after changing the fields around

It seems as if since the Zurich update ServiceNow is simply ignoring "assigned_to" as a coalesce field 

[Mannapuram]

@MitchL  I don't buy your statement as we did upgrade to Zurich and nothing is broken. Usually, the just name is not enough to map 'Assigned_to' in any environment, as there might more than one person with same name. It's advised to use emailID or anything unique used in your AD or EC to be used for coalescing.

[MitchL]

Been looking into this all day, and we may have found the issue on our side rather than a new Zurich change.
Interesting to see that if they fail to find a user record to fill in the reference field then the query that it shows completely omits the assigned_to field rather than searching for record with no user assigned or assuming it must be a new record because it is going to be inserting a newly created user record.

We currently used the user_name field to find the user records, seems someone decided this week to change the format on us and it broke that searching

[Mannapuram · Accepted solution]

That answers it. May be change to email ID from user_name format as the email ID is more distinct and less prone to changes.

[MitchL]

Yeah this is what we ended up doing using the emails as the reference field and it worked pretty well