Reusing a Choice List

[davidlambermont]

Brand new to ServiceNow - long time ServiceCenter developer.   We probably need our own support group...

Anyway, I'm playing around in the public sandbox, and I can't seem to follow the instructions for reusing a choice list by referencing another table/field.   I can select a Choice table from the list, but I can't get a list of fields to display.   Doesn't seem to matter which table I reference (even listing task, which I know has plenty of lists).   Should be the simplest thing ever, but I can't get it to work.

Possibly a related question...   What is the difference between defining a new field as "string", and then adding choices, or defining it as "choice" and adding choices?  

[Daniel Slocum]

Interesting.   This isn't exactly the issue I'm reporting.  

Thanks for the info.   It may be helpful in a diagnosis.

[niedziel1]

Hi David -

You cannot reuse a choice list from a table in a scoped application in fuji.   I have a problem open on hi for this.   This will be fixed but I don't know when.  

Your question about "String" vs. "Choice" is an interesting one.   If you use the Form Designer, list, or form to create choice fields, when the field is written to the Data Dictionary, it will be added as "String".   If you create the choice fields in the Table Editor, the Dictionary entry will show a data type of "Choice".   Why is that?   Not sure.   That said...I always choose "Choice" as my data type when creating choice lists and let the back end do as it will.

Hope that helps.

Mary Ellen

[niedziel1]

So there isn't really an operational difference between adding as a String and then adding choices or adding as a Choice;   just a procedural difference.

In fuji, there are approximately 50 baseline choice fields with type "Choice" in the Dictionary.   There are about 670 baseline choice fields of type "String".

[DenMagnuson1]

So we just did an upgrade from Eureka to Fuji on one of our DEV instances and ran into the same issue. Looks like this is a known issue with a workaround. On HI, the ticket is KB0547660. The workaround has a URL string with a sys_id that didn't find anything when I tried it but, doing after reading what David posted I found what they were getting at and it work for me as well.

Here's how I went about it.

Go to Tables, and go to the record for sys_dictionary.

Go to the dictionary entry for Choice Field (choice_field)

Delete the contents of Attributes for that entry and save.

Again, the question is why and what's different with Fuji for this, but I'll assume it'll be in Patch 3.

[mrswann]

This is showing as a skipped update in upgrade from Fuji to HP6HF1 , so potentially fixed in main release now.

I need to factor in the testing for this KE - I dont have any exact examples where this was NOT working before and exactly what it fixes in our instance

Until then I may have to retain the skip