Link requests in BP

[Met]

Hi,

 

Unless I've missed something, I'm not sure this is currently possible. It would be useful if we could link requests as part of a business process - we're trying to automate as much as possible and this would really help with that.

 

Thanks

Met

[James Ainsworth]

Hi @Met

Thanks for your post.

Do you have a use case in mind?  I'm trying to understand how the automated workflow would know which requests to link to without some manual input.  

[Met]

Hey @James Ainsworth

We are bringing part of our procurement process into Hornbill and as part of this users can submit an initial pre-engagement ticket before they are in a position to provide all the details of the procurement activity. This logs a ticket which goes to the procurement team who at a later date can run a task to decide whether we are proceeding with the activity. If we decide to proceed, it will instruct them to ensure a new ticket is logged which contains all the details and for that ticket reference to be entered into the task. The ticket format is verified using regex and the BP then checks that the ticket is a valid procurement ticket - if it is, it will update both tickets to say they are connected and then close the original ticket. We would also like it to link the two tickets as well without the analyst having to do a second step.

The idea is this would stop them linking wrong tickets or tickets logged incorrectly. There is still some manual input required on this particular use case.

[Steve Giller]

@Met You cannot take a Request Reference and link that to a Request in the BPM, however you can create a Linked Request using the Log Request node (see the Service Manager Business Process Workflow wiki page) which can copy elements of the existing Request and/or specify certain values to automate what you are currently doing manually.

 

[Met]

@Steve GillerThanks - yeah I came across that, problem is we need to capture quite a lot of information through the IC on the second request. What we'd probably do is once the second request has been made and the task is run, copy information from the first request to the second request (which already contains information from IC), link them then close the first.

[Steve Giller]

14 minutes ago, Met said:

problem is we need to capture quite a lot of information through the IC on the second request.

There are ways to do this - for example using your description of the process above you may be able to capture that information in the Procurement Team's Task, log the new Request, then using an Update Custom Fields node and passing the output parameter of the new Request Reference into that update the new Request's Custom Fields with the values from the Task and/or information from the initial Request.
A Task is not as elegant as an Intelligent Capture, but depending on what information you need might well do the job.

[Met]

2 minutes ago, Steve Giller said:

There are ways to do this - for example using your description of the process above you may be able to capture that information in the Procurement Team's Task, log the new Request, then using an Update Custom Fields node and passing the output parameter of the new Request Reference into that update the new Request's Custom Fields with the values from the Task and/or information from the initial Request.
A Task is not as elegant as an Intelligent Capture, but depending on what information you need might well do the job.

Sorry should have said - it wouldn't be the procurement team logging the new request, it would be a user. The procurement team would run the task once the user has logged the updated ticket.

[Sam P]

+1 for being able to link requests in the BP

I would use this to link an Incident to a resulting Change (unless there is a different / better way of doing this).  

[CraigP]

Was about to start a thread on this in case I missed something. Just thought it was a bit odd that the "Servicemanager/Requests/linkRequests" API operation exists but doesn't appear to be an option in the BPM.

[James Ainsworth]

Hi @CraigP

Thanks for your post.  BPM Automations are different from APIs.  A BPM Automation may use an API when the BPM Automation is developed, but an API on its own can't run as a BPM Automation.  The linkRequests API will be used in the main UI where one links the current request with other requests.

[Sam P]

On 1/10/2023 at 8:47 AM, Sam P said:

+1 for being able to link requests in the BP

I would use this to link an Incident to a resulting Change (unless there is a different / better way of doing this).  

Another way I would use this is where Duplicate requests are found as part of our New Starter Process..requests could be linked to the original then closed.

[Steve Giller]

23 hours ago, Sam P said:

where Duplicate requests are found as part of our New Starter Process

That would require that the BPM was aware of the duplicate - out of interest how would you envisage that occurring automatically?

[Sam P]

2 minutes ago, Steve Giller said:

out of interest how would you envisage that occurring automatically?

The identification of the duplicate would be manual, but by entering the Request ID in to a Human Task field, the BP could bypass the generation of the remaining tasks as some/all of them will have already been completed on the original request (well thats how it would work in my mind anyway!) 

[Alisha]

+1 for being able to link requests in the BP. We would like to link to a Problem please.