Parent-child tickets vs. tickets with ticket tasks

I'm trying to understand the pros and cons and major differences between these two scenarios for using parent-child tickets vs. tickets with ticket tasks in a Ticketing application. 

Scenario 1:

  1. Create a ticket and assign it as the parent
  2. Create 1 or more child tickets under the parent, and assign persons responsible for those child tickets
  3. View/Add child tickets under the "Children" tab of the ticket
  4. Create a cascade of assigned tickets using Workflow in ticketing configuration 
  5. View ticket details in "Tickets" section of Ticketing application 

Scenario 2:

  1. Create a ticket
  2. Create 1 or more ticket tasks within that ticket, and assign persons responsible for those ticket tasks
  3. View/Add ticket tasks under the "Tasks/Activities" tab of the ticket
  4. Use "Task Templates" to create an automatic cascade of assigned tasks, including predecessors
  5. View ticket details in "Tickets" section of Ticketing application, but view task details in each individual ticket, or in My Work tab

 

What might I be missing here in my understanding of the differences/strengths/weaknesses of each approach? 

Thanks

 

Tags parent-child tickets ticket-tasks tasks
Asked by Peter Mosinskis on Wed 4/4/18 10:03 PM
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Answers (2)

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Peter Mosinskis Thu 4/5/18 12:29 PM

Thanks Mark, this is very useful.  

Really I'm just trying to understand the pros and cons of each approach at a conceptual level. We are building out a new ticketing application for IT, and I'm trying to make it as easy and simple as possible for our technicians to understand as we move ~45 technicians into the new application. I'd prefer not to muddy the water and pick a single approach whenever possible. 

From your comments, here's what else I picked up:

  • Workflow has a lot of flexibility, but requires an admin to set it up; workflow can't be changed while in progress (w/o restarting the workflow or building in "Condition" steps into the workflow, coming in 10.1) 
  • Ticket tasks can be managed by the technician themselves, and you're right, they can be updated on the fly and changed in mid-flight. 
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Mark Sayers Thu 4/5/18 9:55 AM

Hi Peter,

I guess to really answer you in the most informational way I'd want to know exactly what it would be that you'd hope one of these methods would allow you to do ultimately?

From there I could begin to give you some pointers on which route you may want to go.

With my initial reading of this though, it looks like you want to be able to have a ticket that can have a specific set of (we'll call them "work items") which you'll need different folks to complete, possibly in a certain order, but not necessarily. It really seems like you'd be better off using a ticket (doesn't matter what classification) and a workflow to accomplish this. You can make the workflow to have all the needed tasks on it assigned out as closely as possible to the folks needed for these work items, with approvals and different things in there as needed.

Are you wanting to be able to modify these tasks on the fly? If so, a workflow (since it is not able to be modified mid-flight) might not be the route you'd want to go. This is kind of why a bit more of an idea on what you are needing to accomplish might help us better direct you.

Any additional details on this need would be most helpful!

Sincerely,
Mark Sayers
TD Support

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