Reporting on multiple type-ahead fields

[MMcAnelly]

We're trying to create an issue report that allows us to select multiple people at the same time as participants in a meeting. Within this report we want to create a bar chart that shows how many meetings each individual goes to.

The problem is we're unable to make each selection unique.

Checkboxes: If we use checkboxes and have multiple items selected it creates a whole new item instead of a separate item for each selection. For example, if we select A and B the report shows 1 unique item "AB" not 1 unique item for A and 1 unique item for B. Is there a way around this?

Typeahead Fields: We thought we could use typeahead fields to get one unique item for each individual. Unfortunately, you can't have more than one user in a single typeahead field. So, we thought we could create two fields and combine them into one Calculated field using text mode. Have this so far for the field IF({DE:Listen-in Participants} = "Aaron Payne", "Aaron Payne") but that's only taking one type-ahead field into account. Would we have to create one really long IF statement to account for both typeahead fields and all the different iterations or is there an easier way? 

Anyone else run up against this and have a solution? Thanks.

[Madalyn_Destafney · Accepted solution]

Hi there, interesting situation.

How many meetings are you expecting to report on? If you have your chart have 'meeting' be the X axis, you could still have checkboxes for all possible participants and could have the report be # of participants by meeting instead of by person on X axis (basically reversing your report). If you have a ton of meetings that could be a heavy report but you could  break up the report to see just [this month] to make it digestible...

If you need a report by user, yes it's annoying in WF reporting that each grouping scenario becomes its own grouping. I have not found a workaround for this and it's something WF is I think trying to address with Canvas, whenever that comes around...You are also correct that a typeahead file can only accept 1 name at a time. 

[skyehansen]

can you just use the issue assignments to indicate the meeting attendees and then run an assignment report to parse out the counts? Maybe a matrix report to help you with the totals?

Otherwise, I would probably say your issue object is getting a bit complex, so might be time to convert it to a project and stick a meeting object in there with meeting attendees on the assignment line.