Possible to Merge Tickets?


I often have more than one person record a ticket on a particular issue. It would be helpful if I could, in one swoop, merge the tickets and add the additional submitters (people) as CCs to the original/merged into record.

Is this possible or possible to add as a feature request?

23 replies

I agree. My company is in the process of migrating from RT:Request Tracker to SisAid and this is a feature we are used to having. No worries though...overall we are very pleased with the new abilities we are gaining with SysAid!
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Hello!

In SysAid, instead of merging tickets, you can relate two or more tickets as "parent" and "child" request.

So if you have several tickets on the same issue, you can simply connect all the service requests under one parent (which is one of the service requests) and then you have the option to send email once and it will be sent to all requests, and you can also add additional end users as CC.

To connect service requests together, simply type the "parent" service request number in the "parent ID" field inside a service request.

You can also connect assets the same way.

Best regards.
Haim
When I create 2 test tickets for similar issues I'm applying the parent ID of the first ticket to the 2nd ticket but any changes (eg assigning call to a user does not assign the 2nd ticket. Is this by design or fault?

The issue is that when an issue occurs that many people email in for we are left with many unassigned calls in the new queue until such time as the parent ticket is resolved.
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Hello BColl.
Welcome to the SysAid community.

The parent service request will only update the status of it's child service request, all other details will stay the same, this by design.

In your case, if you want to keep the "unassigned" requests list empty, you can simply assign the child requests to the admin who handle the parent request.

You can also open a feature request to assign child requests automatically to the admin who is assigned to the parent request, I'm sure many SysAiders will find it very useful.

Best regards,
Haim
I have a question about merging:

We have the parent/child SR mechanism in use and there are once in a while a lot of child-SR that contain relevant information to get to the solution of one issue. Right now we have to open every linked child-SR to see if there is the info we need. So i ask if there is a way to:

(a) merge the messeage-text of a child-sr into the notes of the parent-sr?
or
(b) to have a tabular like overview of all linked child-sr?

I am open to detours :-)

Greets, Bjoern

[edit]
I found the posability to insert "Links to other items". Where I can insert the relevant incidents (SR) ... but there is just the info-column "title", not message. Is there a posability to add that one too?
[/edit]
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Dear bje,

Currently this is not possible in SysAid I suggest you to post a FR on our feature request forum.

Thanks

Inna
Apologies for digging up an old post, I need to ask a question.

When you successfully merge tickets together why does the parent and child stay in the Service Desk list as active tickets? Why cannot the child ticket disappear into the parent ticket?
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Hi NMUK,

The Active is based on the Status of the SR, so if you filter to only show Active SRs the child SRs will still be shown in the list as they meet the parameter of the Active Status.
What you can do (and how we actually work) is do add another logic to the filter to only show Parents.
You can do that by adding a parent_link=0 to the static filter of a view or use the Parent ID drop down filter.

Ido
SysAid
Can someone explain how this behavior is more desirable then just merging the tickets together? I have worked on many different systems, and this is the first one where a merge ticket option wasn't provided.

I see a couple of draw backs (that people have already mentioned) with the current parent and child system.

  • If you have multiple tickets on a single issue, and you are researching the issue, you have to continuously visit multiple tickets to get all the information

  • Instead of making an easy process to bring tickets together, I need to go to a text field and type the parent ticket in manually. This is prone to typos and also will cause me to have to research the original ticket (if I find a duplicate) and then go back to the "duplicate" and type this ticket number in

  • Having 10 tickets on a single issue is going to inflate my technicians stats. One issue is resolved, but he is assigned to 10 tickets for that single issue and shows that he closed 10 tickets when that one issue is complete?

  • Many times people don't always respond back to the right email asking for status, or adding additional detail. Attaching that ticket as a child ticket is very messy, and having to copy and paste the details of the new ticket to the old is wasteful


Am I the only person who thinks this system needs major work? This just seems very clunky and inefficient.
Hi fowen,

Merging tickets is an open feature request #8842 (community thread here), which is currently in our expedited development queue. While I cannot currently provide an ETA for this feature, I suggest watching the above thread, as any updates will be posted there when available.

Cheers,
Danny
hi just wanting to follow up on the progress for this request.

the feature request was first raised Aug. 31, 2011 11:38 PM and the last update was Mar. 20, 2016 07:10 AM

is this development still in progress?
Any exceptions on if/when the developers would complete this feature?
Jumping on the bandwagon here. Sometimes we will get a dozen people opening up tickets on the same issue in a 10 minute period. Without being able to merge the tickets the reports are showing 12 problems happened and when the problem is fixed 12 problems get fixed. Since we work hard on lowering the number of problems an environment has we track the total tickets per month expecting a decline. Obviously this impacts that a lot. Is there a work around for now that is reasonable until this feature is released? Can we get an eta for it?
I'm also keen to know the status of this FR, this thread dates back to 2008 and Sysaid haven't provided the feature yet.
Hi TBWADon,

The FR number for this is #8842. The main thread can be found here. This is in our scope for the admin side redesign which will be developed this year.

Cheers,
Danny
For anyone still hoping for this, I spoke to a tech yesterday and they said this was already done, but that they did not implement it due to complaints from "us" about how it worked. Apparently one of the things 'we' didn't like was the way Notes were included. He also mentioned something about how 'we' wanted to be able to comment on the individual tickets after they were merged. Of course that makes little sense considering all tickets are now one, and commenting applies to all merged tickets.

In short, it seems as though they are not going to let us do this. Yet, maybe. I suggested that it should become an option for each installation to choose if we want to merge or not.

I really dislike the parent/child setup we have now. It makes managing the occasional FWD/CC/Reply All email storm a real hassle when you have to click successively through a dozen or more email 'children' just so you can find out what the heck people are talking about.
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Hi All,

I'm glad to inform you that this feature is now available for all Cloud users.

You can view a short video documenting the Merge process on the Cloud Latest Release page (https://www.sysaid.com/product/cloud/latest-release).

Have a great day,
Avi
Is this available for on-premise installs? If not, when?

Thanks,
Shaun.
Hi All

Any word on if and when this will be available for on-premise users?

Cheers
Hey guys,

We're planning on launching the next On-Premise beta sometimes this month, so please make sure you're registered as a Pathfinder if you want to participate! :)

Cheers,
Danny
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Is this available now in the latest on-premise version?
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Yes. The Merge Tickets feature is available in the latest on premise. Here's a short video describing how it works:

 

All the best, Avi

Hi there,

Apologies for posting on an old thread but I have a query.

When SR's are merged, is it correct that when you message/reply to the 'parent' SR, that only the parent SR request user receives the message? We would want those 'child' request users to receive the message too.

Also, when you close the parent SR, does it only close that SR or all the merged children SR's too?

Can someone explain how this behavior is more desirable then just merging the tickets together? I have worked on many different systems, and this is the first one where a merge ticket option wasn't provided.

I see a couple of draw backs (that people have already mentioned) with the current parent and child system.
 

  • If you have multiple tickets on a single issue, and you are researching the issue, you have to continuously visit multiple tickets to get all the information

 

  • Instead of making an easy process to bring tickets together, I need to go to a text field and type the parent ticket in manually. This is prone to typos and also will cause me to have to research the original ticket (if I find a duplicate) and then go back to the "duplicate" and type this ticket number in

 

 

  • Having 10 tickets on a single issue is going to inflate my technicians stats. One issue is resolved, but he is assigned to 10 tickets for that single issue and shows that he closed 10 tickets when that one issue is complete?

 

 

  • Many times people don't always respond back to the right email asking for status, or adding additional detail. Attaching that ticket as a child ticket is very messy, and having to copy and paste the details of the new ticket to the old is wasteful

 


Am I the only person who thinks this system needs major work? This just seems very clunky and inefficient.

 

I agree - this is sloppy.  Anyone who has ever worked on a Help Desk knows this.  

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