Why are some Incident records showing an empty Location while others are populated?

[AryanJ974106532]

Hi Community,

I am investigating an issue related to a report built on the Incident table.

The report displays incidents grouped by Task Type and Location. We noticed that a significant number of records are appearing under an "(empty)" Location value. At the same time, many other incidents in the same report are showing valid locations (for example, Hyderabad, Kaiseraugst, Shanghai, Sao Paulo, etc.), which indicates that the Location field is being populated correctly for most records.

My understanding is that when an Incident is created, the Location field is typically auto-populated from the Caller's Location. However, when I opened several of the incidents that appear in the "(empty)" Location category, I found that the Location field on the Incident record itself is blank.

My questions are:

1. Under what circumstances can an Incident be created with an empty Location field?
2. If the Location is normally copied from the Caller, why would some incidents have the field populated while others remain blank?
3. Are there any out-of-the-box scenarios where Location is not copied from the Caller?
4. Could incidents created through integrations, imports, email ingestion, APIs, business rules, flows, or customizations result in a blank Location field?
5. Is there a recommended way to determine why the Location was not populated on these existing Incident records?

As shown in the report screenshot, there are 361 Incident records under the "(empty)" Location category, while the majority of other incidents have valid Location values. I am trying to understand whether this is expected behavior or if there may be a configuration/customization issue causing some records to miss the Location value.

Any insights would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you!

[AlpUtkuM]

Hi @AryanJ974106532 

I would suggest you to find out how normally location field is populated? (via AD for example)

There might be some reasons why location field is empty such as, some local accounts don't have location populated. Incidents are being created manually by using some UI actions which could cause location field to remain empty. Your 4th point could also be the reason for empty location field.

[Bhavya11]

Hi @AryanJ974106532 ,

Please find out what is configuration done your instance on location field  for example if they have made the something like populate from the caller location or company and so on..
for your question my thought is 

• Under what circumstances can an Incident be created with an empty Location field?
  there are several reasons 
   1. Caller record does not have location populated  
    2. Incident created via API ,Import set or email - where location value is not passed or not parse     correctly.
  3. location field dependency- in PDI , location field is deepened on company  field. if similar configuration exists in your instance
   4. Historical data - some incident created before the location field maintained  on user record   
• If the Location is normally copied from the Caller, why would some incidents have the field populated while others remain blank?
   Difference usually comes to the creation channel and data available during creation 
• Are there any out-of-the-box scenarios where Location is not copied from the Caller? 
    Incident location is not always to be derived from caller location in every scenario. many organization built the custom logic to populate the location 
• Could incidents created through integrations, imports, email ingestion, APIs, business rules, flows, or customizations result in a blank Location field?
  maybe 
   1. For example if integration through API 
      location value is not sent through Payload
      No server logic exist to drive location from caller 
  
   2. import set /Transform map
      location field is not mapped 
      Source data contains empty/null values
  3. Email inbound action / Flows 
     locations is not explicitly populated  
     No server logic exist to drive location from caller 
• Is there a recommended way to determine why the Location was not populated on these existing
  Incident records?
  how i investigate this is issue is 
  Add following column to incident list
   Created by
  Opened by 
   Caller 
  Channel
  Company 
  Location
  Created 
  then look for pattern such as
  1. All empty location  incident are created by same service account ?.
  2.All are created through email ?
  3. All are created through Self service ?
  4. All are created through integration ?
  5. Do affected caller has blank locations ?.
  6.Is company populated on incident and caller?
  
  Also compare a few  records  that have valid location against  a few records that have blank location. this comparison often reveals the root cause of the issue