hi, I want to create a report that shows every residency associated with a cycle. if there is no residency associated with the cycle, I want to show "null" or "no bed" in the column. how can I achieve this? I tried creating a metric with IFNULL but that only works for numbers, not strings

Hi Sasha, just to clarify, currently it is showing '(empty value)' and you want to see "null", "no bed" or some different string? I have created a test report in my end with DUMMY data, and by default I can see '(empty value)' when Residency Id is null (or no value).

it's not showing 'empty value'

did you 'check' the

show missing values

option?

yes

Hi Sasha, can you please share the workspace id to investigate further? (feel free to use DM)

I did @Mauricio Cabezas

Hi Sasha, thank you for sharing the workspace. I have clicked in 'Show missing value' and I can see '(Empty value)' for many rows

those are not the empty values that I need to see

I am sorry, could you please clarify once more.

let's say it has fall 2025 - residency id 123 summer 2025 - EMPTY VALUE

Hi Sasha, I sent you a DM with some screenshots. I will keep you updated. And our apologies for the delay.

@Mauricio Cabezas any updates?

Hi Sasha I am currently looking into this and testing. I have created a Testing visualisation (table). Since you have a complex LDM, may I ask, have you made some recent changes in there?

no

Hi Sasha, I have been testing, again using Dummy data. Can you confirm this is you want? ALso I tried to reproduce your LDM in my end (send it by DM) using some files, but I would like to you to confirm the structure please.

@Mauricio Cabezas a residency doesn't have a direct connection to a cycle

Hi Sasha, could you please send us the 'structure' of your datasets (the four involved datasets would be enough) in your database please? Can be just one row.

you want the column names of the schemas?

Thank you Sasha, thats help. I was wondering if you had the chance to 'clean' the warnings of the involved datasets as suggested. Also I noticed there are Mapping isues with the IDs. Can you please check the datasets and try to fix them?

no, we didn't. there are 81 "warnings" and I'd like a good reason to go through those as to how it would affect the current problem

Hi Sasha, Thank you once again for your continued patience—we appreciate it. We've taken another detailed look at how to display Cycle | Profile | Residency, even when no residency is assigned, and wanted to share a complete explanation of what's happening and how to address it. As part of our investigation, we also reviewed the backend SQL queries generated by the platform to better understand the joins being applied. By default, GoodData uses an "inner join" logic, which means that only cycles with matching residency information are displayed. This explains why cycles without associated residencies are not appearing unless there's a residency to link to. This behavior is consistent with your Logical Data Model (LDM), where Cycle connects to Application, Profile connects to Application, and Residency depends on both Application and Profile. Because Residency is linked through Application, when Application is not included in the report (as you like Cycle | Profile | Residency), the join path becomes invalid. This results in rows being dropped entirely when a Residency doesn't exist—even if “Show missing values” is enabled on Cycle or Profile. A possible solution would be to include Application ID (for example) in the table: Application | Cycle | Profile | Residency. Then, by enabling “Show missing values” on Application, all applications will appear—even if Residency is missing. This will effectively show all Cycle | Profile combinations, and where a Residency exists for that Application, it will be displayed. Where no Residency exists for a given Application, the Residency column will show an 'empty value'. It's also important to note that achieving this specific "null" or "no bed" string display for a missing attribute like Residency directly within a metric using MAQL is not possible. MAQL primarily operates on facts (numerical data for aggregation), and, as you said, the

IFNULL

function in MAQL is designed for handling null values in numerical metrics, not for replacing null attribute values (strings) with specific text. We hope this explanation and the suggested workaround of including Application ID helps you achieve the desired report. Please let us know if you have any further questions.