Publisher field auto populate returns no results or an invalid reference error

[BradP-InnoSolv]

🚨 Unusual issue resolved — sharing in case it helps others!

While working with the Publisher field on new Software Models or Custom Products, I encountered a baffling issue: typing "Microsoft" yielded no relevant results, and pressing enter triggered an Invalid reference error.

🔍 What I discovered: The problem stemmed from two records in the core_company table. The name had an unsupported character appended to the name:

• Microsoft�H

• Microsoft�P

These entries were created years ago by the discovery MID server (Created by: mid.disc) and silently disrupted the lookup functionality.

✅ Fix: After confirming no discovery records were referencing these companies, I removed the invalid characters by replacing them with a space:

• Microsoft�H ➜ Microsoft H

• Microsoft�P ➜ Microsoft P

As soon as these edits were made, the Publisher field search and auto-populate behavior started working properly again.

📸 Before & After snapshot included below

If you’re facing a similar issue, I hope this solution saves you some time. Feel free to upvote if it helped—thanks! 🙌

[dreinhardt]

Hi @BradP-InnoSolv,

Thanks for sharing this! On top I would recommend to enable and use the „Normalization and Data Service“ by ServiceNow to merge all different spellings for one company into a unique gold record.

see the latest SAM blog about this - https://www.servicenow.com/community/sam-blog/enhancing-data-consistency-with-normalization-data-ser...

Best, Dennis

[Sherin Saju1]

Hi BradP-InnoSolv,

I did update Company record, but after another discovery job the corrupt record bounced back.

the created data has no reference to any record. Any idea what data would have messed up.