question What would prevent a field from showing as a Group By on a report? in ServiceNow AI Platform forum

What would prevent a field from showing as a Group By on a report?

e_wilber — Mon, 20 Feb 2017 15:08:06 GMT

I'm doing a very basic report for the Incident table on a custom field u_department that pulls from the Department table.

On my list report under Group By, I cannot select Department. It's there as an available column in the report but it doesn't let me set the report to group by it. I know reports can group on reference fields (such as Assignment Group) so what might be causing this field to not display in the condition builder?

Re: What would prevent a field from showing as a Group By on a report?

Alikutty A — Mon, 20 Feb 2017 15:11:54 GMT

Hi,

You cannot group by on a field which is of List Type.

Thanks

PS: Hit like, Helpful or Correct depending on the impact of the response

Re: What would prevent a field from showing as a Group By on a report?

e_wilber — Mon, 20 Feb 2017 15:13:22 GMT

Sorry, I am not sure what you mean. The field is a reference field to the Departments table, it's not a list field.

Re: What would prevent a field from showing as a Group By on a report?

Michael Fry1 — Mon, 20 Feb 2017 15:26:07 GMT

From a list view of your Incidents, can you right-click on Department and select Bar Chart. Does it group by Department?

Re: What would prevent a field from showing as a Group By on a report?

e_wilber — Mon, 20 Feb 2017 15:30:38 GMT

It's strange you asked that because I just tried that a couple of minutes ago and to my surprise, I cannot group by that column from the incident list.

In my personal instance I added a new custom reference field and linked it back to cmn_department. The report works just fine. It's just this once instance that it's acting weird. I don't suppose there's a setting someone that could be set to not allow a specific column to be grouped by?

Since it's a user created field, maybe it's just corrupt and needs to be rebuilt?

Re: What would prevent a field from showing as a Group By on a report?

Michael Fry1 — Mon, 20 Feb 2017 15:44:05 GMT

No settings that I'm aware of, and I have custom fields that I can group by. Was it created on the Incident table or Task table? You might try creating a new one.

Re: What would prevent a field from showing as a Group By on a report?

Patrick Schult2 — Mon, 20 Feb 2017 19:19:40 GMT

Share some screenshots of your report and the Dictionary entry + attributes for the Incident.u_department field. I don't know of any reason why you could not group on a singular reference field like this unless maybe you didn't pass the read ACLs for the table/column, but I'm assuming you can see the data.

Re: What would prevent a field from showing as a Group By on a report?

steph3 — Thu, 06 Jul 2017 17:08:48 GMT

e.wilber did you just re-create the field? I am having a similar issue. Unfortunately, it is for fields with significant amounts of data in them. So I am looking for another way around deleting them. Is this a bug? Should I open a Hi ticket?

Re: What would prevent a field from showing as a Group By on a report?

Lisa Baremore — Mon, 13 Nov 2017 20:50:20 GMT

I am having a similar issue trying to 'group by' on a string field. I get the option to select that field in the 'additional group by' but not the original 'group by'. Does anyone know if there is a character limit for 'group by'? The field I am working with has a limit of 300.

Re: What would prevent a field from showing as a Group By on a report?

steph3 — Mon, 13 Nov 2017 21:00:59 GMT

Lisa, I ended up putting in a HI Ticket and they informed me that there is a character limit of 255. However, they let me know that I could add the "Can Group" attribute to the field and set it to true. Hope this helps!

Re: What would prevent a field from showing as a Group By on a report?

Lisa Baremore — Mon, 13 Nov 2017 21:22:09 GMT

Oh thank you so much! That helps a lot! this has been driving us crazy!

Re: What would prevent a field from showing as a Group By on a report?

diogo_ramos — Wed, 27 Jun 2018 13:03:13 GMT

Nice find thanks

Re: What would prevent a field from showing as a Group By on a report?

Wade Williams — Wed, 08 May 2019 19:37:46 GMT

Perfect. Thanks!