Change group display name

[kchorny]

First post, be kind.

We recently did a fast track implementation and go-live of ServiceNow.   Everything is working pretty well so far, but our third-party implementation team has closed the project and we still have some outstanding things we'd like to address ourselves.

We are managing our assignment groups and membership in AD, but when we created the groups, some of the names were already being used in AD and couldn't be used again.   So they were adjusted slightly to allow creation, but the new names don't make ticket management very easy.

What we were told we could do is over-ride the display name of the groups in ServiceNow.   However, we weren't given much more information than that.   I recall being told it would be a dictionary over-ride on each offending group name.

Can anyone point me in the right direction to get me started?   I have done some searching and have not found anything that helped yet.

Thanks in advance,

KC

[tltoulson]

If I understand correctly, you want to change the field that acts as the display name for your groups.   To do this, right click on the field you want to be the display name on the form.   Click Personalize Dictionary.   Then click the Display check mark and save the record.   The Group table does not display the dictionary overrides related list because it has no inheriting tables.

This will change the field that acts as the display name for all of your groups, though.   There can only be one display field to my knowledge.   So if you want some to display the Name field and others to display the New Name field, then you will need a new 'Display Name Field' that you will make the display and a business rule that decides whether the value of Name or New Name is put in the Display Name Field.

Someone else may have a better solution but that is the best I am aware of.   Please let me know if you need any additional help on this or if I missed something.

[kchorny]

Thank you, I thought it would be more complicated than this, because our developer said it would be a lot of work.   I'll give it a try.

[kchorny]

Okay, this kind of works except that the lookup is still showing the group name in the list instead of the display name.   I'm guessing I have to adjust the lookup in the forms as well, which may be why they said it would be a lot of work...?   I'm not sure how to do that, so any leads would be appreciated.

[cbweiner]

We made a modification in our instance to use a different display field for sys_user_group, but in hindsight I probably would take a different approach.   What we did not realize was that the Tree Picker functionality (Tree Picker - ServiceNow Wiki) will only display the Name field regardless of what field is set as Display in the dictionary.   As a result, we must always show groups in List View rather than Tree Picker.

If you choose to use a different Display field for sys_user_group, you will also need to go to the Dictionary and remove the following from the Attribute field for any record with Reference = 'sys_user_group':

tree_picker=true

If you want to retain the Tree Picker functionality, I would propose the following as an alternative:

1) Create a new field for the group name, like 'AD Name'.

2) Alter the transform map for your LDAP integration to change the Target field from Name to your new field 'AD Name'.

3) Create a new business rule that runs on Insert to the sys_user_group table to set the Name field = AD Name field.

This option would allow you the flexibility of retaining the Group Name from AD while overwriting the Name field with a revised value, if you choose.   It also does not break the Tree Picker.   If you did not set up a Transform Map for your LDAP integration it may be more effort than what you would be willing to tackle, though.