Incident Tasking - Extend Incident or Task Table?

Wendy Peterson · ‎06-10-2014

I am going to be making an Incident Task table to use as an extension of Incident. I am trying to figure out if I should extend the Task table or Incident Table. Any idea what would be the advantage of doing either. I'll be setting up the on call rules to use whatever table i set up just like incident so i don't think it matters as long as it's referring to a different table. TIA

Jim Coyne · ‎06-11-2014

I actually disagree with the idea of extending the Incident table. I would, and have created an Incident Task table, but by extending the Task table instead. Most of all the fields you would probably need are on Task anyways. All you need to do is add a reference field back to Incident and you are probably done.

Extending the Incident table does not give you a logical Parent/Child relationship, but more of a different "type" of Incident. Just like how Incident extends the Task table, it created a different type of Task.

And if you extended Incident, when you look at a list of your Incidents, the Incident Tasks would be included in that list. That's because, in essence, they would be Incidents as well. Real messy.

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Subhajit1 · ‎06-10-2014

You should go with extending the Incident table as it is logical to set up Parent-Child Relatonships

DrewW · ‎06-10-2014

When you say Incident Task table are you saying you would like to have tasks that have an incident as a parent to have a similar relationship as Requested Item/Catalog Task? If that is what you are saying you may want to consider the ticket table but otherwise I would extend the task table unless you need all of the same fields as an incident and in that case I would extend the incident table but only if I really needed a separation between the two types of records.

Wendy Peterson · ‎06-10-2014

Our helpdesk manager doesn't want incidents to get reassigned anymore but instead use "incident tasks" to get them to work them assign tasks to other teams which is why i have to set up paging on tasks. they will also have their own sla type things for p1 or p2. so i'll be carrying over some of the values from the incident. So if main group A needs to get group B to help on a Incident they will assign a Incident Task to group B. If it's a P1 or a P2 then it needs to page them like Incidents do. They will then do their Task and it will notify the person assigned to the main incident when they are done so yes there will be the relationship.

DrewW · ‎06-10-2014

Ok... That seams a little odd to me but if that's what you are doing then most likely I would extend the Incident table that way you do not have to create a bunch of fields to copy the data to and any time you add a new Incident field it will also be available on the Incident Tasks. Depending on the reporting needed extending the incident table may simplify things for you there also.