Best Practice for Customer comments copied from parent to child

[Kristin J]

Hello! 

I know that Comments are passed from parent to child within Incidents, and I understand why this works when it is the agent passing information down through the chain. But I am wondering what others are doing regarding updates from customers. Are you creating a BR to bypass this when the update is coming from the customer, or something else, or nothing?. We had a situation yesterday where the user updated their ticket (which was the parent) and it cascaded through the 100 or so children and sent updates to them all. Thankfully it was a positive comment, but it was still an unnecessary notification that all users in the chain received.

Thanks for any information or tips you can share,

Kristin

[ccajohnson]

I have seen solutions as simple as turning off notifications to complex solutions that involve calculating where the comment originated and determining who the audience should be. There is not any Best since everyone has a different definition of what is best for them.

You will need to weigh the different children count and determine if there is a need to have the notification to end users versus the technicians. Ask yourself how often multiple children occur and what is the range of children. You indicate you know how the comment synch works, so you should be able to determine if the decision you make is worth the effort to change the way it works.

[Kristin J]

Thanks for the reply. Good to know there is a range of options!

-Kristin

[bammar]

Hello,

I think 1 Best practice is when designating a parent - Perhaps make a Parent under the name of a technician as a placeholder then attach all to it - yes i do know that commonly the first incident that comes in may be used as a parent out of convenience. 

What I would do is establish that if a Parent incident is needed- create one under the name of a Technician - then attach the incidents to it- this way if you still want to leverage mass communication only internal folks can trigger it

Other considerations

Consider using Problem- my setup above mimics problem but i do know these situations may be more not require Problem ( which also has ability to mass communicate)- 

Also - I do beleive from Incident to Incident if you wanted to you could sever this ability for one incident to update others completely- then use mass actions - to send mass notifications instead - it would not be automated but manual but maybe the upside to that is greater...

[Kristin J]

Thanks for the reply. I did consider making a tech-parent ticket, but felt like I was bloating ticket count, albeit mildly. I suppose I'm kind of questioning the inherent behaviour of the comment populating the children (like Problem), because of the ability for a user to unintentionally contact a bunch of people haha.

My teams have access to Problem but we don't practise the practice, so to speak 🙂 It's a good point, however, to consider firming that up, and use the "tech-parent" strategy as a workaround.

Cheers!

Kristin