Best practice to show “X / Y related records completed” on parent record and enable reporting

Dikshya · yesterday

Hi Community,

I’m working on a requirement where I need to track and display the completion progress of child records on a parent record, and I’m looking for a best-practice, report-friendly approach.

Requirement

Parent table: Problem
Child table: Incident
Incidents are related to Problem using the standard problem_id reference.
When an Incident moves to Closed, it is considered “completed”.
On the Problem form, I need to display progress in a readable format like:

2 / 5 incidents completed

(where 2 incidents are closed out of 5 total incidents related to the Problem)

Constraints

I am allowed to create only ONE custom field on the Problem table.
The display should be read-only (informational).
The progress data should also be usable for reporting / dashboards.

What I tried

I initially tried using a UI Formatter (UI Macro + Jelly) to calculate and display the progress.
I ran into multiple issues (Jelly execution failures, inconsistent rendering, AJAXTableCompleter only visible on form).
Based on this, I moved away from UI Formatters and instead:
- Used a Business Rule on Incident to calculate progress.
- Stored the value as a string field on Problem, for example:
```
u_incident_progress = "2 / 5 incidents completed"
```

This works well for UI display, but I understand that string fields are not ideal for reporting.

My questions

Is this approach (UI display via string field + reporting directly on child table) considered best practice in ServiceNow?
Is there a better way to support reporting and dashboards while still respecting the “only one field” constraint?
Are there recommended patterns (Script Include, Flow Designer, roll-up strategy) for this kind of parent–child progress tracking?

Goal

I want a solution that:

Avoids fragile UI logic
Uses ServiceNow reporting the right way

Thanks in advance for your guidance!