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CSM Case State – Should “New” automatically move to “Open” once activity occurs?

Greg L
Tera Contributor

Hi all,

I just wanted to confirm the expected ootb behaviour in CSM regarding case states.

My understanding is that when a case is initially created it is in the “New” state, and that it should automatically transition to “Open” once activity begins on the case.

For example, when actions such as the following occur:

  • An Assigned To user is populated

  • An Assignment Group is populated

  • An agent adds Work Notes or Comments

  • An agent otherwise begins working the case

However, in our instances this does not appear to be happening.

Cases remain in the “New” state indefinitely unless someone manually changes the state to “Open.” but so far I have not been able to identify what controls this behaviour or what may have overridden the OOTB functionality.

3 REPLIES 3

Ankur Bawiskar
Tera Patron

@Greg L 

Did you check in fresh PDI what's the behavior?

To achieve your requirement and set the State to Open, you can use before update BR which checks which field is updated and based on that set the State

where are you stuck?

💡 If my response helped, please mark it as correct and close the thread 🔒— this helps future readers find the solution faster! 🙏

Regards,
Ankur
Certified Technical Architect  ||  10x ServiceNow MVP  ||  ServiceNow Community Leader

Thanks for the response.

Unfortunately I’m unable to access my PDI at the moment to verify the behaviour there, which is why I was reaching out to the community for confirmation. I was assuming this would be ootb behaviour, as it seems like fairly typical case management practice for a case to move from New → Open once activity begins.

However, I’m now starting to second guess myself.

I’ve spent some time reviewing Business Rules, State Flows, Client Scripts, and UI Policies on the case table but so far I haven’t been able to find anything that would be preventing this behaviour in our instance. Cases simply remain in New unless someone manually updates the state to Open.

So I guess I’m mainly looking for confirmation on 2 things:

  1. Is this behaviour actually OOTB in CSM, or is it something that typically needs to be implemented?

  2. If it’s not OOTB, what is generally considered the best or preferred approach to achieve this based on how others in the community have implemented it?

Appreciate any guidance.

@Greg L 

I just checked and Case remains in New when Inserted and doesn't move to Open automatically

You will require custom solution to handle this

I already informed to use before update BR

💡 If my response helped, please mark it as correct and close the thread 🔒— this helps future readers find the solution faster! 🙏

Regards,
Ankur
Certified Technical Architect  ||  10x ServiceNow MVP  ||  ServiceNow Community Leader