Query regarding Parent-Child

[SarveshBobhate]

Hi All,

I am new to this community. We have recently deployed ServiceNow in our business and are still learning things. I have a query regarding Child cases and how ServiceNow reads them. Just for your information, we are using Case module and not the Incident module. 

So let's consider, I have 30 Child cases mapped to 1 Parent Case. I resolve the Parent which then resolved all my 30 Child cases too. Out of these 30. let's assume the alarms have recurred on 2 child cases(using our monitoring system). I have 2 questions here

1. Can ServiceNow use a different state, let's say "Reopened" for these 2 cases?
2. Can ServiceNow prompt us in any way that the Child has reopened?

[Rob Sestito]

Hey @SarveshBobhate - 

So, a couple things on this. First, I want to point out that if you have a Parent Case with one or multiple child cases attached to it and resolve the parent case while child cases are still open. The child cases do not become resolved as well. They will get cancelled per the OOTB flow. So, you will want to watch out for that.

When a case, parent or child, is set in an inactive state (closed completed, canceled, closed incomplete), and manually set to an active state, (ready, work in progress), the system automatically posts a Work Note that is has been Reopened and who reopened it.

To the questions:

1. Overall answer, yes. But you will need to create a custom state if you want something like "Reopened" and add it into the existing flow(s) being used properly. But it is doable
2. You can do this - you would need to create a custom notification and be sure that the trigger condition is configured properly based on when you want the notification to be sent. So, in your scenario, the condition for the notification to be triggered could be: "when to send" = Updated, condition: state changes from Closed Complete AND state changes to Ready/Work In progress (something along those lines). 

It is a bit similar to the User Acceptance workflow. For HR Cases, when a case has been resolved, employee could receive a notification letting them that their case has been resolved pending their feedback. And the end user could either Accept or Reject the case completion via that email they get or on the Employee Portal. If they were to Accept the completion, the case automatically moves from Awaiting Acceptance to Closed Complete. If they were to Reject the completion, the case then automatically moves from Awaiting Acceptance back to Work In progress. And typically, the HR Agent would want a notification letting them know that the case just went from being closed back to work in progress. Sort of similar to your ask about being prompt when the Child case has been reopened.

So, you have some options for sure. Adding a new state is doable but does take some customization. A best practice with SN is to try as best as possible to stay OOTB as much as possible. But if you really need to add a new state then you do have that option.

Let us know if you have more questions, need more clarification, or anything else!

Hope this helps understand a bit - cheers!

-Rob

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[Rob Sestito]

@SarveshBobhate - Any update on your post here?