Hi @zoewalters, 

What is the source of these tickets? Are they coming from email or SSP?

If they are coming from an email check the email rules. You could define the categories that come in from an email. Please see more information about Email Rules to learn how to edit the categories. 

If you give us more information we’ll be able to better assist you.

Thanks 

They mostly come in via email, however we require the categories to be blank so that our helpdesk can triage and set the categories so they are accurate.

In this situation, Parent ticket had been triaged and categories were set.

More tickets came in with blank categories, which were made children of the ParentID.

It would save time if - when we choose a ParentID, the categories are inherited from the Parent ticket so that every category is the same when the ParentID is applied, to save setting individual categories. 

Otherwise, each ticket has to have a category set before it can be related to a parent. But if an analyst sets the wrong category I will then have a potential mismatch of categories in the child tickets. And, it takes extra time to set categories before saving, which when there is a ParentID they should all have the same category as it’s the same root cause.

I will also look at the email rules as an additional option. Thank you.

Hi @zoewalters, 

You could use a one-time Escalation Rule. Once you associate all Child tickets with the Parent ID you can use the Escalation Rule that will search all tickets that have “Parent ID” in them and in the Action Builder you can set the actions. 

Here’s an example:

Now that you’ve done that, in the Action Builder set the categories of the Parent ticket. These will be the categories that the Child will inherit. 

Please let us know if you still need any help or if this solved the matter :)

Thank you. Does this mean that every parent ticket will need to have a manually created Escalation Rule? That could be quite time consuming.

Also - if we enter the ticket to triage it, we cannot add the ParentID and save it because Category is a mandatory field - so this doesn’t work well for us. We need to check the ticket to triage it and make sure that it matches the ParentID before adding it. 

I know we can add ParentID to child tickets from the queue, but as I mention above - we need to open the ticket to triage it.

Is it possible to add a feature to your backlog/wishlist for all child tickets to auto-inherit parent and disable the mandatory category when a ParentID is set?

Hi @zoewalters, 

That’s a really great idea! Please use our idea section so that other SysMates can vote on your initiative: 

https://community.sysaid.com/ideas

All the best :)

Leaving this Idea here for future requesters:

Child Tickets should auto-inherit Category and metadata from ParentID | Community (sysaid.com)

Please upvote!

@zoewalters IF you don’t mind losing the Mother/Child features you can opt in to use “Linked Item” That ill retain more than just the Category. Description for example.

To use this function, you can navigate to Actions ( on the right side ) from your SR and select Create a new Linked Item.

Then you can select what type, let’s say it’s an incident. After you select your Linked Item type as an incident you will be asked to also select a template. 

Let us know if this works as a workaround for your needs.

Thanks! I’m not sure if it will fix it for us, but I’ll test it in my Sandbox and get feedback from my helpdesk - it can’t hurt to try it out!