Blank "Assigned To" show as (empty) in list view

[Patrick Ouimet1]

I just noticed that our list and widgets show blank assigned to fields as (empty) now instead of just having no result. Last week it just showed blank. I checked and there was a london patch that went in on the 20th, but i am wondering how to get it back to blank instead of (empty) in the field. 

Before:

Today:

[Ravi T · Accepted solution]

Hi Patrick,

This was an intentional change made to resolve a problem PRB1004508, which was a longstanding bug that was preventing the text from rendering previously. The addition of "(empty)" was to help make it clear that the cell is actually empty/valueless rather than just an empty string value. This is helpful in general but it's especially valuable for accessibility purposes since screenreader users used to get silence about the cell's value instead of being told explicitly that it is empty. 

This clarification also documented in the following KB aritcle : 
KB0716584 - Why do lists have "(empty)" instead of blank cells for reference fields without a value.

For more information go through the thread below.

https://community.servicenow.com/community?id=community_question&sys_id=bfcc99d3db4eef40b1b102d5ca96194d

Mark it correct/helpful if it helps you

Regards

Ravindra

[Ravi T]

If you got your question answered correctly 

Mark it correct and close the thread so others can find the solution easily 

From your thread and it can be removed from the unsolved questions

Thanks 

Regards

Ravindra 

[alan_lowrance]

Useful information and handy because of previous weird results when you would use .clearValue() to blank out the Assigned_To field it would create a unique sys_id for the NULL that it was so you could never sort/group by actual NULL values but you could if you used Empty String/""

I am glad they finally fixed the difference and are showing Empty Strings being empty, but it does make the list view a little less pretty with all the (empty) words everywhere.

[Ravi T]

If you got your question answered correctly 

Mark it correct and close the thread so others can find the solution easily 

From your thread and it can be removed from the unsolved questions

Thanks 

Regards

Ravindra