Configuring relationship settings

Service center users can manage relationships between cases. The relationship types are parent, child and related.

Cases that center on a single issue and that can be resolved together can be linked in a parent-child relationship. A case is designated the parent, and one or more cases can be linked to that case as children. The system indicates cases that are children of the same parent. These are called siblings.

This feature can be used when a service center opens multiple cases about a common issue. For example, an agent who receives multiple calls about a server outage can open a case for each call and link them through the parent-child relationship.

An agent can create a parent in two ways: by creating a clone of a case with similar attributes, or by creating a designated parent case from scratch. When the cloning method is used, the original case from which the parent case was cloned automatically becomes the child case. Child cases can then be linked to the parent case.

When an agent adds a note to a parent case, the agent has the option to automatically copy the note to all open child cases. If case note editing is allowed, the edited note is saved to each open child case as a new note.

The standard business rule dictates that a parent case cannot be closed until all of its child cases are closed. This rule can be overwritten for any of the service center roles that have cascading case closing rights so that some or all service center users can close a parent and pending child cases simultaneously. Related cases are cases that have similarities but do not have dependencies. They are related for informational purposes.