Create parent/child service relationships

By default, all Web Help Desk tickets are created as service request tickets. If necessary, a tech can change a service request to an incident or a problem ticket.

Service request tickets

A service request is a planned request for a new or modified service. When you hire a new employee, you can create service requests for setting up a workspace, purchasing a laptop computer, and assigning a telephone number.

If you want to track multiple service requests within one ticket, you can create one ticket as the parent service request and link the remaining service requests as children to the parent ticket. Use this option to view the status of all child service requests within one ticket.

For example, Jessie Burns is setting up a new server room in her department. She decides to purchase 12 1U rack mount servers and 12 1U rack mount storage systems. She creates a new service request, and indicates that she wants to purchase this computer equipment for his department. She submits separate service requests for the servers, storage systems, and computer racks, because they are all purchased from separate vendors.

To manage this project, she opens his initial request for computer equipment as the parent service request, clicks the Requests tab, and links the remaining service requests as children to the parent ticket.

The parent ticket displays each service as a linked child ticket. Linking the tickets will help Jessie manage his service requests for new equipment. When all service requests are resolved, Jessie can close the parent service request ticket.

When you close a parent service request ticket, all child service requests are not closed automatically.

Incident and problem tickets

An incident is an unplanned event that causes an interruption or reduction in service. If the new employee receives a laptop computer and cannot connect to the corporate network, you create a service request ticket that a tech can later classify as an incident. If you encounter two or more similar incidents, you can link the incident tickets to a problem ticket.

A problem identifies the root cause of one or more incidents. If the new employee and several other employees cannot log in to the corporate network, you can create a service request ticket that a tech can later classify as a problem. The tech can then link all incident tickets as supporting incidents (or children) to the problem ticket. This process—known as parent-child service relationships—is used to group identical tickets together so you can troubleshoot and resolve all tickets as one problem. When the incident tickets are resolved, you can close all tickets simultaneously by closing the parent ticket. All incident tickets are resolved as a group.

Although linking incident tickets to a problem ticket is not required, it does make managing these tickets easier. For example, once linked, you can see the status of any incident and navigate to it within the properties of the problem ticket. In addition, closing a problem ticket automatically closes all incident tickets, which means that you do not need to close the incident tickets one at a time.

For example, Janet, Ellen, and Bruce submit a service request ticket stating that they cannot access their email in Microsoft Outlook. After researching the problem, you discover that your Microsoft Exchange server is down and needs to be restarted.

To troubleshoot and resolve all client tickets in one ticket, you can change the request type on one client ticket to Problem and the remaining tickets to Incident. Then link all the incident tickets to the problem ticket so they are shown as linked incidents.

When all incidents are resolved, you can close the parent ticket.

When you close a parent problem ticket, all incident tickets are closed automatically.