How to rename field labels for reports only

[AvinashDevadass]

Hi This is a solution post.

I dont have blog access yet

I was asked to rename some of the Labels in reports only.

For example, Consider assignment group field in incident table, and certain team want to rename it as 'Handling group' in a particular report only and they don't care the name in the table.

We know, this is a complex ask. But there is tricky solution that I resolved through database views.

Example scenario, I want assignment group as handling group in incident table for  'XYZ report'

steps to follow

1) create a database view of the table, add incident table and give any variable prefix. I gave 'inc'

2) You can rename the label of the field by adding a record in 'sys_documentation'

3) Note: in that record, the table name should be the database view name you created and the element name should be your variable prefix + Field name

4) Then use the database view name in the reports you create instead of table name.

5) You get field label as 'Handling group' instead of assignment group in the reports.

6) The good parts is you can give additional hint also in the 'sys_documentation' record that will be visible in the report

[Mark Manders]

I hope you delivered this with documentation on how and why, because in a couple of months, someone is asked to create a report on the incident table and has gets the remarks that the field isn't named correctly, without knowing why. What happened to managing requirements? They work with the field as 'assignment group' but in the report it should be named something else? And then somebody is checking the report and wonders what the difference between assignment- and handling group are.

This requirement should have been send back. You are creating a database view on one table, because a field should be different in a report? There is only one answer to this when it's asked: 'no'.

[AvinashDevadass]

Database views are just records that how we are viewing the table. 
I checked technical best practice document provided by ServiceNow and there is no restriction on this.

So I consider this is a better solution

Handling group and assignment group are example.
The real scenario was around Survey tables, they have the columns as string value. We want to modify the field according to the survey.