Why is it "impossible" to re-open RITM ticked marked "closed complete" accidentally?

[efg]

Can someone give me a simple, logical explanation? 

I am a data scientist and receive research requests via Service Now. (I don't know why.) Some of these requests take months to complete.

Someone closed a RITM accidentally by marking it "Closed Complete". For months this shows up as a "closed item". Very annoying.

Our IT guys say it's impossible to re-open this closed ticket? Impossible? Why isn't the system designed to fix human error? 

Please make your product usable by humans.

I am a constantly-frustrated Service Now User.  

[Manish Vinayak1]

Hello,

I understand and can relate completely. Sometimes following a process becomes a pain. But there always is a logical explanation for a process (there should be one atleast). Here's my explanation for your question:

Service Request Management is done in ServiceNow using the Service Catalog. It follows a structured process for the fulfilment of those requests. 

When you submit a request through a catalog item submission, it generates an REQ (Request which is parent record holding multiple item requests) and an RITM (requested item record with the details of access / service requested). Based on the workflow defined on the catalog item, it can have several levels of approvals, and then fulfilment tasks and / or any other script activities / automation activities.

So basically the structure is:

REQ > RITM > Approvals > Tasks

Once the approvals are done, the tasks are generated. Once all Tasks from an RITM are closed, it closes the RITM record. Once all RITMs are closed, the parent REQ is closed.

Problem with re-opening the task:

You see the closure of child records determines the closure of the parent records. So, let's say a TASK was accidentally closed and it closed the RITM, it might also close the REQ if it was the only RITM in the REQ. It might have triggered, all the notifications to the requestor/ other users regarding its completion. 

Since, task determine the status of RITM, you can't directly open an RITM as per the process. You need to re-open the task, which then needs to re-open the RITM, and hence the REQ. But the problem here would be, that the workflow had already finished running, opening the task again doesn't take the workflow back to the task stage. So, a business logic would be needed to re-open the TASK, RITM, REQ records. It is not impossible, it is just not present out of the box to keep the process structured. 

Another option would have been restarting the whole workflow, which is possible and easy to do. But, that means the approvals will be triggered again, all the notifications will be generated again, which is not a good user experience.

It is also not good in terms of governance, as then users can re-use the same task / RITM to perform actions by re-opening them, you lose track of audit records, impacts reporting, etc. Hence, ITIL best practices doesn't advise you to re-open a request; you can re-open an incident because it involves fixing an issue, and if it is not done it should be re-opened.  But in case of requests it is different  case, let's say someone raised a request to get access to an application and they didn't get access to that application even after the closure of the request, they can raise an incident quoting that request number that it was closed and they didn't get the access. It it was accidentally closed by the fulfiller, they should try to put work_notes on the ticket / connect with the user to explain if that is still being done / cannot be done.

So, the conclusion is, it is possible to re-open the closed ticket. But it is not recommended to do so because of the issues associated with it.

Hope this makes sense and helps!

Cheers,

Manish

[houstonrahoyt]

So, can UI Actions be built that would achieve re-opening of a ticket?  

[efg]

Manish:  Thank you for your reply.  Your brief introduction was extremely helpful.

Here's something I still don't understand:  Why isn't the tool designed for humans and reality?  In our case, two tickets were accidentally closed in April -- no work had started on the tickets.  They are still open.  When I found out they were closed, I had to send emails to tell the clients the closure was a mistake and that I would still be working on their projects.  Where is that email exchange documented in Service Now?  Reality shouldn't need to be suspended the first time there is a mistake.

I have asked perhaps half a dozen times since April about how we can get the tickets re-opened, so we can track and report "reality".  Yesterday I posted my question here after the consensus of five others, including our site administrator, was there was no way to fix the problem.  And we're still no closer to a solution.  Reports will always be wrong now whether or not we open new tickets.  I don't disagree with "best practices" but we need "good enough" practices so we can get our work done. Look at the loss of productivity this tool is costing us because there is no good solution offered by the tool.

There should be a quick and easy way to re-open a ticket (perhaps requiring extraordinary intervention by an administrator), and document the problem and the reason why the ticked was accidentally closed.   Document the reality of what's happening instead of forcing a broken system for all time once someone makes a simple mistake. 

So, how do I open a Service Now ticket to get their engineers to allow human mistakes and reality? Let's document all problems, and not say it's best practice to be perfect.

I am still looking for a good Service Now experience.

[Sara Drew]

Manish - it was a good explanation but you miss the KEY item - he did not accidently close the TASK - he accidently closed the RITM - task was still open and in progress. What kind of customer experience did you provide by sending a Close notification and not allow the REQ or RITM to be re-opend, with explanation sent in the Customer visible notes of the ticket explaining the accident? No approvals re-triggered, no starting at the beginning required - Just allowing the ticket (REQ / RITM) to be set back to Open or In Progress.