Parent and Child Cases In Dovetail Agent
The 4.0 Release of Dovetail Agent brings support for parent-child relationship among support cases to the users.
Having a functionality available to designate one support case as parent of other cases may play important role in the way your customer support responds to a situation when a large number of cases report the same problem, but in many different ways.
Let’s consider an example of a communication company with a range of services usually bundled to include: Internet access, VOIP, and cable TV. When a local hub goes down, customers start reporting problems with symptoms like: ‘my phone line is dead’, ‘can’t watch the news’, ‘my e-mail is not working’, etc. These are some examples of case titles, which at first may not suggest that all these cases have much in common. Once a root cause if found, all these cases may be identified as ‘child’ cases of just one case which either was reported first, or explains the situation best.
Having a number of cases linked as child ones to a parent case has many advantages:
- all the cases related to specific problem are now easy to find,
- they can be managed together, for example closed in response to the parent case being closed.
Parent-child management for support cases has been known to ClarifyCRM users for a long time, Dovetail Agent now offers the same functionality but in a slightly different manner.
Our implementation follows the same general rules as ClarifyCRM:
- A parent case can have many child cases and cannot have a parent case.
- A child case can have only one parent case and cannot have child cases.
- A case cannot be its own parent.
This is where we are different:
- The Parent Case check-box on the Case screen is not available.
- The Parent Case and Child Cases tabs are combined into one tab.
- Attaching a child case to a new parent case is instantaneous upon clicking the Attach button. You do not need to click Save.
- The Parent-Child relationship can be altered regardless of case ownership.
- The Parent-Child relationship can be altered regardless of case status.
- Parent Case tab is not available on the New Case screen. The Parent/Child tab becomes available once the new case has been created.
- A new screen to search for a parent case has been added.
- A new function to search for and attach multiple child cases to a parent case has been added.
Let me explain these differences in more detail:
#1: Parent Case check-box on the Case screen not available
You no longer designate a case to be a parent one by checking the Parent Case box on the Case screen in Dovetail Agent before making another case a child of this one. Although the table_case.is_supercase field is still there and we maintain it for compatibility with ClarifyCRM, it is set to 1 at the time a case becomes an actual parent. It gets reset to 0 when the last child case is detached.
#2: Only one tab with caption of Parent/Child, Parent Case, or Child Cases
Because a case can be either a parent or a child at the same time and never both, there is only one tab in Dovetail Agent dedicated to this subject and it changes its contents and caption depending on the situation. If a case is not a parent and not a child, this tab is used to explain what parent-child relationship for support cases is about and provide links as starting points to make a case a parent or a child.
Once a case becomes a parent or a child of another case, this tab changes its caption accordingly and shows the parent or a list of child cases for the current case.
#3: Immediate bonding of child case to its new parent
If you are on Parent Case tab and you have chosen a new parent case for the current one, there is an ‘Attach’ button to be used to associate these two cases. Selecting a new parent case does not make the case screen ‘dirty’. Therefore, clicking on ‘Save’ instead of ‘Attach’ will not have any effect on parent-child relationship for this case. On the other hand, if you made some other changes to the current case, i.e. you changed its title, clicking ‘Attach’ button will only change parent-child relationship for this case but will not save the case itself, you must also follow up by clicking ‘Save’.
#4: Power to the administrator
In fact, you don’t have to even be member of any administrative privilege class to be able to manipulate parent-child relationships for cases you don’t own. All you need is to have the Parent-Child Cases privilege. This is intended to allow bundling of cases by anybody who knows they belong together without yanking from and assigning back to the current owner.
#5: Old cases count too
A case may be made a parent or a child of another case even if it is now closed. This responds to a situation when some of the cases related to the root cause have been already resolved before you knew what the root cause was. Later, when you find out that they refer to this cause you may find them and assign to the right parent case without a need to reopen.
#6: Create a case first, make it a parent or child of another case later
This is a side effect of not having the Parent Case box on the Case screen available in Dovetail Agent. So you have to create a case, save it, and only then the Parent/Child tab becomes available.
#7: Finding new parent case is easy
When you are trying to locate a parent case for the current one, you have a ‘Find’ button available in ‘New Parent Case’ section of the ‘Parent Case’ tab. It takes you to ‘Select Parent Case For Case: id_number’ screen where you have access to a set of convenient filtering and sorting features, no need to define and store any ‘filters’. Your search results are not limited to only those cases which are not closed.
#8: Attaching many cases at once to a parent is now possible
This function is not available in ClarifyCRM.
Imagine a situation when you have a large number of cases identified as being related to the same root cause. Now it’s time to pick one of them and make it a parent of all the other ones. Some of them may have been already closed. How to do it quickly ? All you need to do is pick one of these cases, go to ‘Parent/Child’ tab, and follow the ‘attach child case(s)’ link which takes you to ‘Select New Child Case(s) For ‘Parent Case: id_number’ screen. Here you have access to familiar search/sort features which may allow you to locate the cases you want to attach to the chosen parent. Once the grid is filled, you may attach the cases selectively or use ‘Select All’ button to mark them all. One important thing to mention is that if a case being attached to a new parent had a parent case before, it will be ‘moved’ from the old parent to the new one.
Please refer to Dovetail Agent documentation, Parent-Child Cases chapter, for more information about how to use this new functionality. It contains the screen shots and description of typical scenarios.
There is also an article by Gary Sherman about how to close all child cases when their parent case is closed.
