Working with Linked Work Items

v2021.2

Various features in Enate allow you to manage activities being carried out by different teams, letting you easily create and oversee work items even when you don't have full permissions on each other's work.

You can:

• Create and link together work items, even ones in business areas you don't have permissions on.

• Share and add communications between those work items.

Launching a Case or Ticket from within an existing one creates a 'Linked' relationship between the work items - Items created in this way will retain a link to the original Case / Ticket and will show on a 'Links' tab within it, making it easy to track a group of work items which relate to each other.

Let's take a look at some of these features, starting with how you create linked Work Items..

Creating a linked Ticket

To create a new linked Ticket from an existing Case or Ticket, click the ‘+ Work item’ link shown near the tabs section of the work item and the choose the 'Ticket' option from the dropdown.

In the resulting pop up, you can filter to search for the new type of Ticket process you want to create in two ways:

• by searching by email route - you can specify the mailbox address which people would normally send emails into to create work items. Often an email mailbox represent a certain part of the business within which you want to create your new work item. As a useful shortcut we've added a feature here where you can search by mailbox and narrow down straight away the Ticket processes that you can choose from. Selecting a mailbox will filter the dropdown options to only the processes linked to that mailbox.

• by selecting a Customer, Contract, Service and a Ticket process to launch (these will default in values if there is only one option to choose).

Please note that the Tickets available for you to launch will depend on the permissions settings in Builder. Additionally, you will also only be able to select a Ticket process from an email route that has been enabled in Builder (see here for more information). You will also only be able to select a Ticket process in Test Mode if the email route for that Ticket process has been configured to run in Test Mode.

You can then adjust the following settings for the Ticket:

Setting	Detail
Title	You can modify the title of the new Ticket you are creating
Description	You can modify the description of the new Ticket you are creating
Category & Sub Categories	You need to select the category & sub categories of the new Ticket
Override Due Date	If your system has been configured this way (see here for more information), you can select to override the due date of the new Ticket you are creating.
Copy Defects, Files and Custom Data	You can share existing Defects, Files (including tags) and Custom Data from the original Case/Ticket with the new Ticket you are creating.
Copy work item communications	You can share work item communications i.e. emails (including email attachments) and notes between the original Case/Ticket and the new Ticket you are creating. Note that if you are creating a Ticket from a Case, this will only share Case-level communications, not Action-level communications or Sub Case communications. You can copy individual Action or Sub Case communications by sharing individual emails/notes from their comms timeline.
Disable Automated Emails	You can choose to send automated system emails to contacts tagged as the the primary contact, requester or subject.
Adding contacts	If permissions in Builder have been configured to allow you to do so, you can add multiple different contacts for the new Ticket and divide the tags between them.

Then click to Create. A link to the new linked Ticket will appear in the 'Links' tab.

Creating a linked Case

A linked Case is a Case that is related to a Case or Ticket, but its parent Case is completely independent. This is useful when the parent Case’s Due Date is not dependent on some sub part being completed (e.g. by a different department).

To create a new linked Case from an existing Case or Ticket, click the ‘+ Work item’ link shown near the tabs section of the work item and the choose the 'Case' option from the dropdown.

In the resulting pop up, you can filter to search for the new type of Case process you want to create in two ways:

• by searching by email route - you can specify the mailbox address which people would normally send emails into to create work items. Often an email mailbox represent a certain part of the business within which you want to create your new work item. As a useful shortcut we've added a feature here where you can search by mailbox and narrow down straight away the Case processes that you can choose from. Selecting a mailbox will filter the dropdown options to only the processes linked to that mailbox.

• by selecting a Customer, Contract, Service and a Case process to launch (these will default in values if there is only one option to choose).

Please note that the Cases available for you to launch will depend on the permissions settings in Builder. Additionally, you will also only be able to select a Case process from an email route that has been enabled in Builder (see here for more information). You will also only be able to select a Case process in Test Mode if the email route for that Case process has been configured to run in Test Mode.

Setting	Detail
Title	You can modify the title of the new Case you are creating
Description	You can modify the title of the new Case you are creating
Schedule	If your system has been configured this way (see here for more information), you must select a schedule for the new Case you are creating.
Override Due Date	If your system has been configured this way (see here for more information), you can select to override the due date of the new Case you are creating.
Copy Defects, Files and Custom Data	You can share existing Defects, Files (including tags) and Custom Data from the original Case/Ticket with the new Case you are creating
Copy work item communications	You can share work item communications i.e. emails (including email attachments) and notes between the original Case/Ticket and the new Case you are creating. Note that if you are creating a work item from a Case, this will only share Case-level communications, not Action-level communications or Sub Case communications. You can copy individual Action or Sub Case communications by sharing individual emails/notes from their comms timeline.
Adding contacts	You can add multiple different contacts for the new Case and divide the tags between.

Then click to Create. A link to the new linked Case will appear in the 'Links' tab.

Creating a Sub Case

A Sub Case will behave according to its own specific configuration, but its “parent” Case will not complete until all of its Sub Cases have completed.

You can therefore only create a Sub Case from an existing Case.

To create a new Sub Case, click the ‘+ Work item’ link shown near the tabs section of a Case and the choose the 'Sub Case' option from the dropdown.

In the resulting pop up, you can filter to search for the new type of Sub Case process you want to create in two ways:

• by searching by email route - you can specify the mailbox address which people would normally send emails into to create work items. Often an email mailbox represent a certain part of the business within which you want to create your new work item. As a useful shortcut we've added a feature here where you can search by mailbox and narrow down straight away the Sub Case processes that you can choose from. Selecting a mailbox will filter the dropdown options to only the processes linked to that mailbox.

• by selecting a Customer, Contract, Service and a Sub Case process to launch (these will default in values if there is only one option to choose). Note that the Customer for a Sub Case will will be auto-filled as the same as its parent Case i.e. the Case you are creating it from.

Please note that the Sub Cases available for you to launch will depend on the permissions settings in Builder. Additionally, you will also only be able to select a Sub Case process from an email route that has been enabled in Builder (see here for more information). You will also only be able to select a Sub Case process in Test Mode if the email route for that Sub Case process has been configured to run in Test Mode.

You can then adjust the following settings for the Sub Case:

Setting	Detail
Override Due Date	If your system has been configured this way (see here for more information), you can select to override the due date of the new Sub Case you are creating.
Description	You can modify the description of the new Sub Case you are creating.
Schedule	If your system has been configured this way (see here for more information), you must select a schedule for the new Sub Case you are creating.
Adding contacts	You can add multiple different contacts for the new Sub Case and divide the tags between them as you need.

A link to the new Sub Case will appear in the Sub Cases tab and NOT in the Links tab.

Sub Cases Tab

The Sub Cases tab will show the following information for any Sub Cases under a Case:

• Current State icon

• Sub Case reference number and Case title

• Action Count – The count of Actions associated with this Sub-Case

• Owner– the Case owner(If defined)

• Queue – the Cases Queue (If defined)

• Due Date – The Case due date

• Icon to expand the Sub Case to reveal its Actions

Sub-Case Reference Number Logic

Reference numbers of Sub Cases can be broken down as follows:

Viewing Linked Work Items - The 'Links' Tab

The Links tab is where you can view all linked work items of a Ticket or Case.

Note that Sub-Cases created via the '+ Work item' link will still display in the 'Sub Cases' tab for the time-being, and do not show in the Links tab.

Within the Links tab grid you can a list of Linked work item, showing their reference, title, assignee, Queue and due date of a work item.

There is also an icon to unlink the work item if they have been linked in error.

You can also expand linked Cases to see their Actions.

Linked Work Items you don't have permissions on

If you don't have permissions on a certain business process, the work items from that process will be greyed out and you won't be able to open or edit them. You'll still be able to see higher level information about the work item, e.g. who they're assigned to, which Queue they're in and when they're due.