Synchronization between a parent and a child incident

The parent and the child incidents are synchronized such that the state of a child incident changes depending on the state of the parent incident.

Table 1. Parent-Child state synchronization

Parent State	On Hold Reason (Parent)	Child State	On Hold Reason (Child)
In Progress	NA	In Progress	NA
On Hold	Awaiting Change/Awaiting Problem/Awaiting Vendor	Same as parent	Same as parent
On Hold	Awaiting caller	Not updated	Not updated
Resolved	NA	Resolved. The Activity log in the child incident form is updated with the resolution notes copied from the parent Incident.	NA
Closed	NA	Not closed. Child incidents must always be closed by the caller or by the system based on the auto-closure property.	NA
Canceled	NA	NA	NA

Note:

This table applies only to standard incident life cycle states. When a parent incident is proposed or accepted as a major incident, the states of any associated child incidents do not change automatically. For more information, see Managing major incidents.

When an incident has a child incident, the following actions take place:

• If an ITIL user reopens the parent incident, then the parent incident as well as the child incident reopens. Both the parent and the child incident state is set to In Progress.
• If an ESS user reopens the parent incident, the parent incident state is set to In Progress but the child incident is not reopened.