Getting Started with Parent / Child Tickets

This how-to article will help Ticketing Users to create and work with tickets with parent/child ticket associations. The user must have the following access: Ticketing application access. 

Overview

Creating relationships between parent-child tickets allows for establishing relationships between parent classifications and child classifications within your TeamDynamix ticketing applications. With these relationships in place, updates, comments, and other features can be cascaded from the parent down through the children to communicate and manage tickets more effectively than by managing each ticket individually.

Use Cases

Some potential use cases for parent/child ticket assignments include, but are not limited to:

  • A Major Incident (e.g., network outage) with additional, related tickets all assigned as child tickets with the classification of Incident.
  • A Release that includes a number of Change requests to be fulfilled.
  • A Change to be deployed that addresses a known issue within a Problem, which caused a Major Incident, that impacted a number of related Service Requests.

Classification Eligibility for Parent/Child Ticket Relationships

The following classifications can be child tickets:

  • Incidents
  • Service Requests
  • Major Incidents
  • Problems
  • Changes

The following classifications can be parent tickets:

  • Major Incidents
  • Problems
  • Changes
  • Releases

Note that some tickets can be both parents and children. You can have multiple layers of parent/child ticket relationships, or you can skip over classifications when creating parent child ticket relationships.

Establishing a Relationship from the Parent Ticket

There are two ways to build a parent/child relationship from within the parent ticket. Remember that the ticket's classification must meet the criteria above to be eligible to be a parent ticket.

Add Existing

Use this method to associate an existing ticket as a child to an existing parent ticket.

  1. From within the Children tab of the parent ticket, click Add Existing
    • If the Children tab does not exist on the ticket, then this ticket is not eligible to become a parent ticket.
  2. In the popup windows, check the box(es) next to the ticket(s) you want to become child tickets.
  3. Click Add Selected to add the selected tickets as child tickets.

The newly added tickets will appear in the list beneath the Children tab of the parent ticket.

Add New

Use this method to create a new ticket as a child to an existing parent ticket.

  1. From within the Children tab of the parent ticket, click Add New
    • If the Children tab does not exist on the ticket, then this ticket is not eligible to become a parent ticket.
  2. Select the Classification of the child ticket you would like to create.
    • Only eligible classifications will appear in this list. Review the Classification Eligibility section above for more information.
  3. In the popup window, select the desired form and fill out the form fields. Click Save when finished.
    • When using this method, the form will pull in values from the originating ticket whenever possible.

The ticket created will automatically be assigned as a child ticket, and the original ticket will become the parent ticket. The newly created ticket will automatically appear in the list beneath the Children tab of the parent ticket.

Establishing a Relationship from the Child Ticket

There are two ways to build a parent/child relationship from within the future child ticket. Remember that the ticket's classification must meet the criteria above to be eligible to be a child ticket.

Create Parent

  1. Click Actions > Create Parent
  2. Select a form for the parent ticket.
    • Available options will only include forms whose classifications are eligible to be parents of the classification of the current ticket.
  3. Make any additional changes to the form and then click Save
    • When using this method, the form will pull in values from the originating ticket whenever possible.

The ticket created will automatically be assigned as the parent ticket, and the original ticket will become the child ticket to the parent.

Set Parent

  1. Click Actions > Set Parent
  2. Type in the Ticket ID# of the parent ticket, or search for it by clicking on the magnifying glass.
  3. Click Save when finished.

The assigned ticket will then serve as the parent, and the originating ticket will be set as the child for that parent.

Cascading Updates

When making an update to a parent ticket, you can choose to Cascade the update from the parent down through the children. This will recursively update the Status on all children of this change. Not only are children of this change updated, but also this change's children's children, and so on.

Cascaded updates include the following:

  • The change in the ticket Status
  • Any Notification selections
  • The Comment entered when performing the Update

To Cascade an Update, the ticket being updated must be a parent ticket with child tickets assigned to it.

  1. Click Actions > Update
  2. In the popup window, click Cascade
  3. A dropdown box called Cascade Notification will appear.
    • If desired, select the role(s) that you want to notify. These correspond to the roles that exist on the child tickets. Choices include:
      • Reviewers / Reviewing Groups
      • Creators
      • Requestors
      • Responsible Persons / Groups
  4. Add a Comment.
  5. Update any other additional fields as necessary, then click Save.

Cascaded updates will read as (Update Cascaded) if the Cascade checkbox is checked.

If Cascade Notification is used, It will appear as Update Cascaded (Notified: Role(s)), e.g., Update Cascaded (Notified: Creators, Requestors)

Cascading SLAs

You can also assign an SLA to the parent ticket and cascade the SLA assignment down through the children. Simply check the Update SLA on all children checkbox when using either Actions > Assign SLA or Actions > Reassign SLA.

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