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Closing a number of cases at once

Occasionally we get requests about closing a bunch of cases at once. Some people refer to it as a “mass case closing”, others use the term “batch case close”. Whatever you call it, it’s easy to do in Dovetail Agent.

This request comes up when a bunch of test cases get created, or if a customer goes out of support, or a bad email loop creates cases by mistake, or a myriad of other reasons.

Find the cases you want to close

First step – create a query for the cases you want to close.

I want open cases created in the last 365 days with the word “test” in the title.

So, I created a query with 4 filters:

  1. Condition Starts with Open
  2. Item Type Is Equal To case
  3. Created within last (days) 365
  4. Title Contains test

Run the query to get results:

query

Select all the resulting cases using the Select All checkbox:

selectAll

Select the Batch Actions menu:

Actions

Notice that the close menu item tells us that only 6 out of the 19 cases can be closed.

Why?

  • Some of the cases are owned by someone else. Application rules enforce that you can only close cases you own.
  • Some of the cases are in a queue. Application rules enforce that you cannot close cases that are in a queue.
  • Some may have open General subcases. Application rules enforce that a case cannot be closed if it has open General subcases.

We could yank the ones we don’t own, and accept the queued ones.

But, before we do that, I typically take one other step: I tag them.

Why tag them?

This is to handle the situation where a workflow operation (such as yank or accept) could change the query results.

For example, if you wanted to close all the cases that are in the Test queue, your query would look like:

TestQueue

Lets say that the query returned 10 results. If I then accepted or yanked all of these cases, then that query would return zero results. So how do I get back to the cases that I want to close?

Tagging solves this.

OK, back to the task at hand.

Tag ‘em

Using the same Batch Actions menu, we choose Add Tags, and give it a tag name. My tag is named “to be closed”. Clever, I know.

AddTags

Take ownership

Now that they’re all tagged, we can yank and accept them – using the same Actions menu.

Close ‘em

Now that we own them all, and they’re no longer queued, and they’re tagged, we can close them.

From your sidebar, under Tags, click on the to be closed tag, which will shows all of those cases:

ToBeClosed

Select All using the checkbox

Now the Actions menu doesn’t warn us about any that can’t be closed. So we’re good to go.

Close

So we simply choose the Close menu item, select the desired status, resolution, and notes – and click the Close Case button

CloseForm

 

And we get the notification that 19 cases were closed:

Notification

Success.

Recap

  1. Query for the cases you want to close
  2. Tag them (using the Batch Actions menu)
  3. If needed, take ownership of them (yank/accept using the Batch Actions menu)
  4. Close them (using the Batch Actions menu)

Summary

The Batch Actions menu in Dovetail Agent is a pretty powerful tool, and makes it easy to perform the same workflow actions on multiple items.

Hope you find this useful.