Are glide lists groupable in reporting

[mforward]

I created a list report and would like to group by a glide list field, however that particular field is not available in the Group by drop down list. Are glide lists not able to be made groupable for reporting because of its data type?

[CapaJC]

Glide lists aren't currently groupable. One reason for this is because two different records could have the same two referenced values in reversed order (e.g., for a Watch list, one might have Beth Anglin and ITIL User, and the other could have ITIL User and Beth Anglin). A human might expect those two records to be in the same group, but they wouldn't be.

I'm sure there are other reasons - that's just one that comes to mind.

[CapaJC]

However, if you're okay with that "limitation", you can add a Dictionary attribute to a glide_list field: can_group=true

That Dictionary attribute will enable grouping for a field where grouping is normally disallowed.

[mforward]

CapaJC

Thanks CapaJC!

So if I added the can_group=true dictionary attribute to the glide list field, would there be any way to remedy that "limitation"?
I'm assuming not based on how a glide list would behave in reporting as you mentioned earlier.

[CapaJC]

No, all a glide_list stores is a comma separated list of sys_id values. We would not be able to practically determine that A,B,C,D was logically the same group as C,D,B,A. With a very small list? Sure. With a table with a million rows? It's just not practical.

There could maybe be some sort of Business Rule hack where, before insert or update when the field value changed, a script re-ordered the values alphabetically based on display value of each referenced record, and then the grouping would probably behave as desired. But there's nothing out-of-box to do that.