Choice vs Reference

[She Sull]

What is the difference between the Choice field type and the Reference field type? In Managed Documents, the Type (document type) field shows it is a reference field when you right click and select Show- 'type' , but it seems to be behaving like a Choice field and even provides the options Personalize Choices and Show Choice List.

[Pradeep Sharma · Accepted solution]

Hi Sherry,

Here is my understanding

Type :Choice:

• if field type is choice then you see Drop-Down list of choices.(It can be reference to the table)
• The choice can be personalized

Type:Reference

• Query that displays records from another table
• Here we dont see the behavior of field as drop-down

I hope this helps

Thanks,

Pradeep Sharma

[Slava Savitsky]

A reference field can actually be configured to display as a dropdown list. See the following Wiki article:

Auto-Complete for Reference Fields - ServiceNow Enterprise Wiki

I think this is the case with the Type field in managed documents.

[She Sull]

Thanks, Slava. Does that man I cannot create a Reference Qualifier on a Choice field? I've tried an Encoded Query and a call to a Script Include and both fail. I'm not sure if it doesn't work because of my implementation of those methods or if it's the field type.

- Sherry

[Satyaki Bose1]

Hello Sherry,

That's true.

You cannot have a reference qualifier in a choice field.