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.  

[Jordan McCann]

You can re-open any task if you want to do it. The process is not designed for that to happen for good reasons, as stated above. A way around this is to lock a user from directly "close completing" a record. Instead of me saying the request is closed, I say that it is "resolved" or "under review" whatever you want to call the state. You hide the closed state so that this "accidental" human error can't happen. You then have a script or workflow that will follow a process that allows something to be re-opened within a set period of time. Obviously, you don't want 6-month-old requests re-opening. You can do this because you aren't closing the request or task and instead leaving it open in a pending closure state with a defined process.

Edit: @Sara Drew The workflow is attached to the requested item, which is why you can't reopen the requested item.

How you set up your instance is up to you and your admins/developers/architect. ServiceNow gives you an ootb experience that can be customized. Look at the standard OOTB experience for Incident management to get an idea. It goes to a resolved state for X amount of time before closing. For data governance and process flow, it is best to leave a closed task/request closed. So, if a business issue arises where tasks keep getting closed "accidentally," then make it so that state change cant happen.

This is a rather old question, and I saw @Sara Drew commented six days ago. @Manish Vinayak gave a perfect response. @efg I understand your frustration with the platform, but it is configurable, so if this is a business problem, bring it up to your platform team and talk about implementing a solution. 

Hope this helps.

[Sara Drew]

Yes - agreed it's pretty old question but one that keeps cropping up, so seems multiple customers would like a different flow that didn't need to be configured (except for number of days...). But understand the limitation with the current design and thought process.