Case - Related Parties Tab

[Christopher Sik]

Does anyone have any solid links to documentation or videos on how to configure and use the Related parties tab in Case records.

During our implementation of CSM, we were told by our development partner that this could be used to add vendor contacts and other third-party contacts to Case records who do not have snc_internal access to the instance or ITIL roles. Listing them on this tab would allow agents to assign Case Tasks to Related Parties. If the related party has an email address assigned to their profile and assuming notifications are in place, they would email letting them know that a particular task needs to be completed by them. They could reply to the email when the task is done and then the agent could close out the case task.

Unfortunately, our partner does not know of any clients that have ever used this feature. And they usually turn it off. But I think there could be a great deal of value to our agents and partner vendors if we could get this working as advertised.

[Christopher Sik]

@Callan Bond thank you for sharing this presentation. It is exactly the type of content I was hoping for regarding this feature. And it really shows how this feature works. It aligns very well with the description our ServiceNow partner shared with us several months ago.

But there is still an important piece missing that would prevent us from implementing this feature. Throughout the demonstrations in the video, an admin was required to step in and apply certain roles to user profiles before they could be added to the Related Parties tab and assigned appropriate access to cases, products, etc. I don't see this as a practical scenario for agents working cases as they come in. It is highly likely that the related parties do not have accounts in the platform and the agents will not have the admin roles required to assign the appropriate roles. So in my view, what the Customer Access Management module still needs is an out of box method baked into the Related parties tab that would allow an agent to create/update user records on the fly and assign the appropriate related party type.

I was hoping there would be some way to just add a contact directly on the Related Parties tab using variable fields designed to collect basic user information and without having to select from the pre-exisitng user list. Contacts entered this way would be then be auto-configured as users in the background and provisioned with the appropriate roles as defined by the related party type selected on the form. If the user already existed, their roles would be updated only if needed. If the account was inactive, reactivated, etc. Once an active user account is in place, the related party would be auto-notified of their relationship to the case, and given appropriate options for next steps like, set a password, access the portal, view the case, etc.

There would also need to be a way for the agent to be notified when these user records were active/updated either by some indication on the related parties tab, a work note added to the case, etc.