Is it against best practice to allow groups to reopen closed incidents?

[Patrick Tipps1]

I have been asked to do research into allowing certain assignment groups the ability to reopen closed incidents. I'm not finding a ton of information about this but I get the feeling it's a bad idea for several reasons. No one should be allowed to open up a closed incident that months old and start working on it, at least in my opinion. Can someone with more experience shed some light on the potential downfalls of doing this?

[Dr Atul G- LNG · Accepted solution]

Hi @Patrick Tipps1 

• It can impact the SLA since you need to configure it if an incident gets reopened after being closed.

• You will need to modify the out-of-the-box (OOTB) code to allow reopening.

• The incident count won’t increase, as users can add another question or issue by reopening the previous incident.

• It can be difficult to track why an incident was reopened after being closed.

• There could be issues with metrics and reporting.

• Lastly, this is not considered a best practice from an ITIL process perspective.

[AndersBGS]

Hi @Patrick Tipps1 ,

 incidents that are closed should not be reopened. you can reopen a resolved incident but not a closed.