Reporting on Multi-Select Picklist Fields

I’ll parrot what everyone else is saying, which is that having multiselect picklists in Timeline (which was a big win) has been kneecapped for us because of the inability to efficiently report on them.

Another +1 to the comments. It is quite frustrating. 

Hello All,

An update on this request

We will work on this item in the upcoming days. The scope of the work item will be to support Group By on multi select picklist fields. I will update this thread on the exact deadline ( planning to release it in Q4 2023, but no final confirmation as of today)

Hi @Prateek Parashar! Any news? Is it still planned for this quarter?

Hi @andr_raposo  Its on track to be released with Q4 release . The scope is- supporting group by on multi select picklist fields

Not saying this is the correct solution.

However, if reporting is absolutely needed there is a possible work around with 2 new objects and a rule, bionic.

Create an object for your dropdown list where each option has its own row and a second column that is. always the same, i.e. boolean and always marked true.

Add a field that is always the same to your source data,

Merge this data together, your merge field is the always the same field. Note, this will duplicate your data across multiple rows for every option.

At this point in bionic rules you used to be able to do a substring and search for the text from a different field. However, they seem to have taken this capability away. So, now you push it to the second new object and create a Number formula field where you are finding the string position.

Note in the String position Column it will yield numbers. Anything above 0 means that that particular string exists in the multi select string. Which you use this field as a filter. So since Rel 123 only has one option rows 2 and 3 will filter out. Since Rel 234 has 1 and 2, the formula returns a greater than 0 result which means 3 will filter out. But, now you have two rows for that particular relationship.

This rule will run everyday to continuously update the Reporting table, upsert keys are the rel gsid and the Dropdown Table Options column.

The only non-scaleable part of this solution is you have to add a new row every time you add a multi select option. In theory you could probably automate this piece too if you really wanted to.

So now you build a report and you do a count of GSID Grouped by Dropdown Table Options.

Yes this is a bit of a workaround. However, I know what it is like to not always have No as an acceptable answer.

This thread is 4 years old. This is a challenge for our org as well. Any update from Gainsight’s product team or should we lean on the work arounds identified in this thread?

Good news should be around the corner @jessica_owens :) 

Big fan of this idea - happy to hear there’s been progress made!

any update on this feature request?