Dependent choices not displaying until form is saved

[Karen Gess]

I'm new to ServiceNow so apology in advance for this stupid question.

On my Incident Form, I'm using Category as a dependent choice field based on Service.  I cannot get the choices for the category to display until I press Save on the form.  It remains 'none', but once the form is saved, it displays the correct dependent choices based on the dependent value.

What am I missing?

Thank you

[OlaN · Accepted solution]

Hi,

Dependent fields is rather tricky, so your question is absolutely justified.

On the Docs is states that
"A choice or reference field can be declared dependent on another field on the same table. Dependent fields limit their available values based on the value in the dependent field.
Using dependent fields turns on choices. The available choices for your field rely on the value that a user chooses for the dependent field."

So in your case, you have made your Category dependent on the Service.Name field, which means that choices will show, if they match the Name value of the selected Service.

The name is not available on the record, since it's a reference field, when you select a reference field the value stored on the record is the sysID of the referenced record.

That means that the service.name isn't available to a dependent field until after the record is saved.

If you want the dependent field to show correct choices directly when you change the service field, you need to alter the dependent to be Service, and input the sysIDs as dependent values instead.

[Karen Gess]

Thank you so much for your assistance.  That makes sense that it is not updating based on Service.Name.

For the field category, I changed the Dependent field to be Service, but not sure I understand 'input the sysIDs as dependent values".   Isn't that what I have listed in the choices within my screen shot?  If so, it's still not working after changing the dependent value to Services.

Again, sorry, this is all new and I'm trying to get an understanding of the relationships between the tables.   Appreciate the help.

[OlaN]

In your attached picture, you will need to change the Dependent value from Names to sysIDs.
So where it states "Firm Software" it should read the value of a sysID, something like "739e4a7387441110b93064a80cbb3554"

You can get the sysID from the Service record, by opening them, and select Copy sys_id.

[Karen Gess]

Thank you so much!  Exactly what I needed.