Overview
Within an Enterprise Service Management (ESM) platform tickets are created for all kinds of reasons, by a wide variety of methods (e.g. email to ticket, service portal, phone call, etc.) In most cases the ticket represents a valid request for some work to be completed; however, occasionally a ticket might be created that never should have. For example: if the ticketing application as an email monitor enabled tickets may be created off of spam, phishing, or other junk messages.
Every ticket is a learning opportunity about the service, the team, the person, and the process!
As a general practice we strongly recommend not deleting any ticket as this can result in lost traceability of work completed. Irrelevant tickets can be managed via several different options described below.
In this article:
What materials do I need?
- Web Browser
- TDNext license
Option 1 - Cancel/Close the Ticket
- Open the applicable ticket.
- Click Update.
- Set the Status to Closed (or Canceled as applicable for the department's business process).
- In the Comments field, enter a note as to why the ticket was closed/cancelled.
- Click Save.
Option 2 - Use a Graveyard Ticket
Prerequisites
To leverage this option it is first necessary to create a custom ticket status, as well as creation of a single ticket that will act as the destination ticket that invalid tickets will be merged into, commonly referred to as a graveyard ticket. These two steps must be done either by an ESM App Admin, or ESM Enterprise Admin for ticketing app in question. If they have already been created proceed to the Merge Invalid Ticket into the Graveyard Ticket step.
Create a Custom Status
Important
The following activity must be done by either the ticketing application's App Admin, or by an ESM Enterprise Admin.
- Open the desired ticketing application's admin console.
- Click Statuses.
- Look to see if an existing status of Invalid Ticket (Admins Only) exists, if so proceed to the Create a Single Graveyard Ticket section below, otherwise continue.
- Click + New.
- In the New Status dialog that appears enter the following:
- Title: Invalid Ticket (Admins Only)
- Description: This status should be used solely with the Graveyard ticket, and used within reports as a filter to exclude the graveyard ticket.
- Order: 100
- Class: Canceled
- Select Do Not Reopen
- Click Save.
Create a single Graveyard Ticket
Important
This step only needs to be completed a single time for a specific ticketing application.
- Open the desired ticketing application.
- Click the + New button, then click Generic Service Request (note the actual name of the form might vary by application).
- Complete the ticket with the following recommend values:
- Title: Graveyard Ticket for Invalid Tickets That Should Not Exist
- Requestor: esm_ticketgraveyard@alaska.edu
- Click Save.
- Open the ticket that was created.
- Click Update.
- Change the New Status to Invalid Ticket (Admins Only).
- Add a comment.
- Click Save.
Merge Invalid Ticket into the Graveyard Ticket
Important
Merging a ticket will reassociate the following items from the source ticket to the destination ticket:
- Feed entries
- Attachments
- Assets/CIs
- Alerts
- Time types
- Expense accounts
- Time entries
- Expense entries
- Source Control Events
After these items have been reassociated, the source ticket will be deleted. This will discard read-by information and any fields on the source ticket, although a feed entry containing the title and description of the source ticket will be written to the destination ticket.
Warning
A merge cannot be undone! Once you go through this process, and click the Save button the original source ticket will be deleted and cannot be undeleted. Make sure the duplicate ticket you're going to merge into another is the correct one before proceeding.
- Open the invalid ticket in question.
- Click the Actions button.
- In the menu, select Merge into.
- In the To Ticket field, enter the ticket number for that ticketing app's 'Graveyard Ticket" (e.g. 12345).
- Alternatively, click the lookup button to the right of the field, and search the applicable ticket.
- Wait for the text pop-up to appear which should display the title of the destination ticket (e.g. Graveyard for Invalid Tickets That Should Not Exist).
- Click the text pop-up, "Graveyard for Invalid Tickets That Should Not Exist"
- Leave the checkboxes unchecked.
- Click the Save button.
More details on merging tickets is documented in the Merging Tickets in Enterprise Service Management KB article.
Option 3 - Request a Ticket Deletion
Ticket deletion should be considered the option of last resort.
Warning
A deleted ticket cannot be recovered! Once a ticket is deleted it is no longer available for use in reports, and other elements.
Important
For department specific ticketing applications, requests for ticket deletions will only be accepted when submitted by an App. Administrator of the application in question.
- Open an ESM Ticket request.
- In the What do you need help with field, select Other.
- In the Additional information about this request field provide the name of the ticketing app (e.g. "UAA") and the ticket number(s) that should be deleted.
- Submit the request.
- ESM Enterprise Administrators will review the request, verify that it was submitted by a current App Admin for the ESM ticketing application in question, and then proceed to delete the requested ticket(s). When finished, they will notify the requestor that the specified ticket(s) have been deleted.
Need additional help or have issues
For support, requests may be submitted anytime using the appropriate Enterprise Service Management form. Requests generate a Ticket which will be worked in order received and urgency by IT Employees with the knowledge and permissions to assist with the request.
For immediate assistance please review the Contact Us page for the appropriate support group.