Compliance Workspace: Dot-walked 'State' field shows as (empty) for a single user in Smart Assessmen

[Mira1992]

Hi everyone,

I am troubleshooting a strange visibility issue in the Compliance Workspace and would appreciate any insights or ideas on what might be causing it.

The Issue: One specific user cannot see the value of the "State" field when viewing Smart Assessments in the Workspace. The field simply displays as "(empty)" for them across all records.

Technical Context:

• Navigation: Compliance Workspace > Lists > Control attestations > Smart Assessments

• Tables: The list view is built on the Assessment Instance Persona (sn_smart_asmt_m2m_instance_persona) table. The "State" field is dot-walked from the parent Assessment Instance (sn_smart_asmt_instance) table.

• Role: The user holds the sn_compliance.manager role.

Troubleshooting Performed:

1. Role Comparison: Another user with the exact same roles can see the State values in this workspace list perfectly fine.

2. Classic UI (Backend) Check: If the affected user navigates to the Classic UI backend and views the sn_smart_asmt_instance table directly, they can see the "State" field values without any issue. This confirms they have the correct Read ACLs at the table and field level.

3. Environment Check: The affected user can see the State values correctly in the Compliance Workspace in our DEV and TEST instances. The issue is isolated to PROD.

Since the user has backend access to the data, this seems strictly related to how the Workspace list component is rendering the dot-walked field for this specific individual.

Has anyone encountered a scenario where a dot-walked field in a Workspace list hides its value for a single user? Could this be related to a corrupted User Preference (sys_user_preference) or a Workspace caching issue?

Any advice on where to look next would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks, Mira

[Mark Manders]

Caching can easily be checked. Just run a cache.do and have the user log out and back in again. The fact that DEV and PROD show different results, either means that something has been done on DEV that has not yet been promoted to PROD, or that it's a caching issue. Also check the user preferences difference between the instances. I doubt it's in there, but you never know.

[Mira1992 · Accepted solution]

Ok so I created a SN Case and they found the cause of the issue:

The issue is caused by the missing 'assessment template' column (this caused issues with evaluation of the ACLs) - after the column was added to the list view in the workspace the issue was no longer seen.

I found similar behaviour mentioned in the following articles - the recommended approach to resolve this issue is to add the column used in the ACL evaluation
https://support.servicenow.com/kb?id=kb_article_view&sysparm_article=KB0529493
https://support.servicenow.com/kb?id=kb_article_view&sysparm_article=KB1978508

So all I needed to do is to tell that impacted user to add the column back into her list view and that was it.