Incident Tasking - Extend Incident or Task Table?

[Wendy Peterson]

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 · Accepted solution]

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.

[DrewW]

I think it depends on what needs to be done with the Incident Task.   If it needs to look like the parent incident and the data needs to be changed so it is different than the parent then extending task is going to be a chore.   But if all that is needed is a simple "Please do X" ticket/record then I agree with extending the Task table or just using the Ticket table since this is basically what its for.

The decision is all in the details of what the tech needs and will be doing with the record and if the child needs all the same data and if that data needs to be different from the parent.

[Jim Coyne]

Don't forget that with a reference field to the Incident table, you can add any appropriate fields from that record to the Incident Task form and have it editable.

The fact that Incident Tasks extended from Incident would then show up in lists of Incidents would make things real ugly, real quick.   Reporting would be a pain.   You would need to always filter out the Incident Task class records to make any sense of your true Incidents.

[antoniovegue]

And actually, we have now a table called Incident Task [incident_task] extended from task.

Regards!

[RKumar3]

Go with extending TASK table. Use the analogy of Requested Item and Catalog Task parent child relationship.