Symptoms

A user is not being shown the expected view for a particular form.

Release

ALL

Cause

There are a number of reasons the desired view may not be shown to a user. These include:

• A view rule which is forcing a different view.
• A business rule which is forcing a different view.
• A user preference is setup for a different view.

Resolution

The easiest way to know if a different view is being used is to right click the record and go to the View menu and see which view is selected. However, some users do not have access to that functionality. In that case open the target record in it's own tab without the rest of the navigation pane which will allow you to see the URL for the record and see what the view is. You can do this as follows:

1. Display a list of records from the table that you want to check (such as incident).
2. Open one of the records in a new browser tab using a mechanism such as holding down the windows key and clicking the record ID in the list, or right clicking and choosing Open in a new window.
3. You will then see the full URL of the record in the tab such as:
   https://myinstance.service-now.com/incident.do?sys_id=3ed3e2172b8631006c59ae6219da1585&sysparm_record_target=incident&sysparm_record_row=1&sysparm_record_rows=63&sysparm_record_list=active%3Dtrue%5EORDERBYDESCnumber.
4. Check the URL and locate sysparm_view. If no view is specified then the default view should be used but if you see a different view being used then this could explain why your field is not being displayed.
5. If a different view is being used you should check the following:
   • Go to System UI > View Rules and check for any view rules for your table which might apply.
   • Search business rules to see if any that are defined could impact view. These will have the text <tablename>GetViewName referenced in the script field where <tablename> would be replaced with the actual table name. For example, if it is the incident table that would be incidentGetViewName.
   • Check if the affected user(s) have system preferences with defined view that is different than expected. User preferences will have the name <tablename>.view where <tablename> is replaced with the actual table name such as incident.view.