Closing linked incidents/requests within a problem

[bwood]

Hi

When creating a problem and linking any relevant incidents/requests to the problem. Once the problem is resolved and closed will it automatically resolve and closed the linked calls?

Thanks

Ben

[TrevorKillick]

Hi Ben,

No currently the ability to close / resolve linked requests does not exist.

This requirement does frequently come up so i will pass the feedback on to Development.

Kind Regards

Trevor Killick

[bwood]

Thank you Trevor.

[James Ainsworth]

Hi Ben,

As Trevor suggests this is something that is commonly discussed. We do have some plans for introducing some functionality help with the status updates between linked requests but this is not currently scheduled.

Would there be concerns with the automatic resolving or closing of requests when some of these may have outstanding activities or requirements within a BPM Workflow that still need to be completed? The other consideration is that some requests may be linked for reasons other than just being something that will be fixed when the parent is closed. There is also the risk factor of mistakenly resolving one type of request that in turn resolves all the linked requests which may send out resolution confirmations for something that isn't actually fixed or prematurely stop resolution timers (speaking from a personal experience).

What we do currently have is a BPM Automated task to update the timeline of the linked requests. This has some great options such as selecting the linked request types that you want to update. For example if you are working on a problem record that has both incidents and changes linked, you can set it to update the incidents only. Providing updates to the requests, rather than closing them, give the owner of the updated requests the opportunity to communicate to customers or fulfil any remaining tasks or BPM requirements.

[nasimg]

I would only be linking simple incidents to a problem with the understanding, updating the problem updates the related incidents. I can't see situation where I had outstanding tasks on the incident which couldn't be closed.

[bwood]

Hi James,

Thanks for your response. The only time we would need the ability to close multiple jobs at once is If we had a whole site down and customers logged incidents for the same thing. These would be simple incidents with no activities attached.

I'll take a look at the automated task you mentioned.

[Gary@ADL]

Hi Guys - we are looking at this as well,

 

the same as mentioned before, we are looking to create a problem, then create an incident for each person that reports the problem and link it to the problem. once the problem is fixed we'd like to close the problem and have it close all the linked incidents.

as stated above, these would be simple incidents that would be verified as being related to the initial problem before they are linked.

 

thanks

Gary

[James Ainsworth]

I'm pleased to announce that in the latest build of Service Manager (934) there is a new feature that allows for linked requests to be resolved.  Two separate meathods have been provided.

The first allows you to configure your BPM to automate the resolve and closure of linked requests.  The documentation for this can be found here in the Linked Requests section.

A second option can be enabled which will allow you to manually resolve and close linked requests when resolving and closing a request.  The documentation for this can be found here.

Here is an video overview of the new features.