What is the use of the Company field on the incident form ?

[midjoule]

Hello,

Here is how the system behaves when creating an incident (OOB):

1. When filling the incident form, you can freely set the company and the configuration item (no restriction, because the company field is empty). Let's say that he selects the Application Service "Jira"
2. The company is set to the caller's company once the incident is saved (i.e. Company A)

Our Business Case

Then the incident might be transferred to an assignment group in another company (Company B). The assignee might want to change the configuration item to refine it and select a specific server hosted by his company (Company B) and hosting the "Jira" application. However, the configuration item list is restricted by the company set on the incident form (Company A). He has to change the company manually to be able to select the server of Company B (which is not obvious and creates confusion).

Our analyses

From my perspective, 

• Origin of the incident can be derived from the company of the caller
• Resolution of the incident can be derived from the company of the assigned to

In conclusion, this incident.company field looks confusing to us, because it brings a 3rd notion to the incident which is unclear.

Questions

Could you please explain the purpose of the incident.company field ?

Note that we are thinking about deactivating this incident.company field to eradicate any confusion. Would you see any risk in doing so ?

Thanks for your insights.

Best regards

[suvro]

I do not see any impact of removing the company field from the incident form, unless and until any business rule, client script or UI policy is using that field and also check if that field is being used for any reporting or not. If the answer is negative for all you can safely remove it from the form.

If it is required, I would suggest, have another company field to store company of assigned_to and use the existing one to store company of caller. This will reduce the confusion.

Mark the answer as correct if I answered your question

[dmathur09 · Accepted solution]

Hi,

Main purpose of the company should be knowing the company of the caller who has raised the incident that would give an additional information to the technician who is working on the incident.

You can deactivate the company field if not required but I would suggest instead of deactivating you can just hide it from the form so that users are unable to see the field on the form.

Deactivating the field will remove all the existing data which is present on the existing incident records.

Regards,

Deepankar Mathur

[midjoule]

Hi Deepankar,

Thanks for your answer.

However, if I only hide it on the form, it's still present for selection in reports where users get confused again.

Best regards

[dmathur09]

Agreed to your point.