Request Items remain open after all catalog tasks are closed

[Eitan Thal]

We have identified an issue where various Requested Items are not being closed, regardless of the fact that all associated (child) SC Tasks are closed. Multiple records that are currently active display a "Completed" 'Stage' value. There are Numerous Catalog Items affected, consisting of a variety of different Workflows. When tracing workflows from the Requested Item record, the "End" activity correctly displays a status of "Finished" and the stage is always being set to "Completed' by a "Set Values" activity within the same workflow. My understanding is that setting the stage to "Completed" triggers a background process that should in-turn deactivate each Request Item, marking the 'State' therein as "Complete", but this is not the case.

My questions are:
1) Is this is expected behavior?
2) Should we have a script activity or Business Rule in-place to account for closing the parent Request Item once all child Tasks are closed?
3) Is this the result of a known issue on the ServiceNow end? If so, is there a patch or a fix we can apply?

[Erik Nelson]

I've found it to be a best practice to also define the "State" along with the "Stage". This can be done in the Workflow at the "End" if there isn't a possibility of another State or by using "Set Values" if there could be other States/Stages in play (Closed Skipped, Closed Incomplete, Rejected, etc.) If in Flow Designer, you'll want to handle it by Updating the Record to set Stage/State accordingly. The good news is, "State" for existing records can usually be updated by an admin so that you can get the existing records completely closed out. Also, Stage should be what drives closing out the the overall REQ, so that shouldn't be impacted if the Stage is currently being set properly.