Record relationships

Relationships between records, such as tickets and work orders, help simplify record management. You can create record relationships manually, or relationships might be created automatically when you take certain actions.

The types of relationships that can exist between records include:

  • Related relationship, which is an informal association of tickets that is used for informational purposes.
  • Originator and Follow-up, which keep costs hierarchies separate while still creating a relationship between the tickets.
  • Related to Global, which creates a relationship in which the tickets are related to a global issue, which affects many users.

Related records

Using any ticket or work-based application, you can view similar records and relate tickets and work orders to the current record. A related relationship between records is an informal relationship that is for informational purposes only.

A related relationship does not affect status inheritance, affect workflow, or follow a set of business rules. Related relationships can be many-to-many, and do not represent record hierarchies. By relating records informally, you can navigate to related records, view related information for similar records, and view open tickets that are associated with a field. You can create an informal record relationship in the following ways:
  • Use the Related Records tab of the application. This tab provides an easy way to create relationships and to view and navigate among informally related records.
  • Use the Show Similar Tickets action in any ticket application. The similar ticket search results only include the service requests, incidents, and problems that have the same classification as the current ticket. Global records and history records are not included in the results. Your system administrator might add more restrictions to the search results.

Originator and follow-up tickets and work orders

You can relate tickets and work orders to a record more directly when you create a follow-up record from the ticket using one of the Create actions on the ticket. The ticket you create the follow-up record from is the originator. A follow-up record can be a ticket or a work order. In some cases, a follow-up ticket or work order might be able to change the status of its originating ticket. An originating ticket cannot change the status of a follow-up work order, nor can a follow-up ticket change the status of the originator if there is more than one follow-up. These options are configured by the system administrator.

Globally related tickets

A global ticket is an incident or problem relating to an issue that affects many users. You can relate tickets, including service requests, to a global ticket, which creates a RELATEDTOGLOBAL relationship. This relationship lets you manage the tickets by using the global ticket. When you change the status of the global ticket, the system changes the status of all globally related tickets.

If your administrator has set up automated notifications of status changes, the system changes the status of the tickets related to the global issue. For example, all the initial requestors reporting the same issue are notified of its resolution. On the global ticket, you can also view a list of related records and view the work and communication logs for all related records.