in reports, what is the difference between count and sum aggregation when the field is not a int

juan9
Giga Guru

 

this is my understanding:

sum is used for int fields to add up 

count is used to count the the records, not the sum of the content of the field.

 

so why is sum different than count for a choice field?
if anything i would expect sum to be higher than count because sum is maybe adding the number of characters or something.

Screenshot 2024-08-05 at 8.56.07 AM.png

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

Hemanth M1
Giga Sage
Giga Sage

Hi @juan9 ,

 

Count: is Pretty simple group by : Cout of each gropup by element

Sum : Value of the field selected for sum for each record *grouped by number

 

Example:

1)In your report "111" , its stright group by on the type , number of string type field across all the table is 47,283

2)In your "22222", for the same : Open these records in a separate tab, group by choice field , you wi;ll see something like this

HemanthM1_0-1722873230464.png

now , go and get choice values for each of these types i.e

HemanthM1_1-1722873289152.png

 

now calculate i,e

12577*0 +311858*0 +4204*1+722*2+2505*3+5*4=13,183 which is less than count

 

Report(in my PDI) : Count

HemanthM1_2-1722873412439.png

 

Sum:

HemanthM1_3-1722873472630.png

 

Hope this helps!!

 

Accept and hit Helpful if it helps.

Thank you,
Hemanth
Certified Technical Architect (CTA), ServiceNow MVP 2024, 2025

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5 REPLIES 5

Hey @Hemanth M1 Did ever come across a way not to display count or any other Aggregation value from reports