Implementing a case to incident relationhip

Aaron Wilson2 · ‎08-17-2018

Has anyone implemented a 'case to incident ' or 'case to request' relationship within CSM. Just interested in feedback and pros and cons. We're planning to add a help desk group in CSM then link to existing L2 support in incident/request for cases they can't resolve at help desk level.

dennismagnuson · ‎09-25-2018

Aaron,

We have a client that we've done both for, however, the Case - Request side needs to be revisited so I won't speak to how that was done.

For the Case to Incident relationship, we started with a UI Action. We made a copy of the 'Create Incident' from the Requested Item table and updated the sysparm_query to set the fields on the new Incident record. That will create the record and populate with information from the Case and then allow for updating as needed. The default relationship we're using is the Case is the Parent for the Incident.

The next part is process related that you need to ask and plan accordingly.

Who is the Caller for the Incident, the external Customer or the Support Agent that raised the issue? If the Customer, will they receive normal communications associated to an Incident record?
When Incident Comments are updated, do they update the Comments of the Parent Case record? Do you want Customer seeing comments by IT staff?
When Incident Work notes are updated, do they update the Work notes of the Parent Case record? How do your Support Agents keep up with the Incident status without having to open that record?
When the Case Comments or Work notes are updated, will that information update the Incident record?
When the Incident is Resolved or Closed, what happens on the Case record?
If the Customer cancels the Case record, what happens to the Incident record?

You can see how the questions keep coming as you unravel the process side and how your organization wants to handle different scenarios. How those questions get answered will trigger which Business Rules you'll need to update or create and if you need to change conditions for email communications.

The logic we're sticking with is that a Case record is for the External user and the Incident or other related records are limited to internal IT. Problem records would be associated to the Incident(s), and Change Requests related to Problems or Incidents. Whatever your process is for those relationships, you'll need to think about the impact to the Parent Case record.

So Requests have some of the same bullet point questions but is more complicated and I don't have a fully flushed out answer. The Request Management model has the Request, Requested Item, and Task records.

Where do you related them to the initial Case?
What if the Case spawns multiple Requests, or Requests for multiple Customers?
Does the Task fulfillment group direct any questions to the Support Agent that submitted the Request or go directly to the Customer who the request is for?
Who is the Requested For on the Request record?
Who receives communications regarding the Requests?
Why has ServiceNow never added the Requested For field on the Requested Item record? (Sorry, personal complaint)

Again, no easy answer. There's nothing OOB in support of Case resolution by Request, at least nothing that I've seen in London, but I know that's a process model ServiceNow is supporting. If you're going to have a CSM Service Portal for your Customers, what to you provide for them with regards to Requests? If you go directly with the Catalog Item, you've put the Customer into the Request process and bypassed Case. If you give them Record Producers that create Case records for known Requests, then your Support Agent has to facilitate the submission of the Request, potentially having to contact the Customer for additional/missing details.

Like you, I'd love to here feedback on this from a tool/implementation perspective. I know I threw out more questions than answers, but hopefully it gives you an idea on direction.

Dennis

Aaron Wilson2 · ‎09-28-2018

Thanks for the insights. We're still in the planning stages, but you do raise some good items to consider for both incident and request. I'll leave this open for now to see if any other feedback out there and will also add our results once we get to implementation.

-Aaron

Community Alums · ‎01-22-2019

Hi Dennis,

I have improved the 'Create Incident' (Create an incident through UI Action). Looks more clean and scalable. That will create the record and populate with information from the case and then allow for updating as needed. The default relationship is case as the Parent for the Incident.

Meantime 4mo ago, kathyneff (Sr. Tech Product Marketing Mgr, CSM at ServiceNow) mentioned they are related. According to her the best practice is for the customer to submit a case, and then spawn a request from there and associate it with the case. This allows all communication with the customer to be done via the case object. They will be rolling this out formally in the Madrid release - calling it Service Management Best Practices, which will allow incidents, problems, changes and requests to be created from cases and attached to them.

Thank you,
Raf

dennismagnuson · ‎02-11-2019

And here comes Madrid with the solution for relating Cases and Requests. Client wishes are always ahead of the ServiceNow development curve. 😄