Multi-level ticket classification

Hi there,

A customer requested to have a “multi-level” ticket classification.
Issues would be assigned an “activity type” through a custom field.
Then, a second custom field would need to be set, whose values depend on
the first.

Think of:

NetworkFailure --> (Layer2, Layer3, …)
AppFailure --> (LockUp, WrongOutput, …)

The left hand side would be a category (first level of classification)
and the right hand side would be a sub-category (second level of
classification).

This means you could have a ticket with Category=NetworkFailure and
SubCategory=Layer3 but you could never have a ticket with
Category=NetworkFailure and SubCategory=WrongOutput.

Ideally, we want to model this using custom fields. At the start, a
Category CF would be displayed, with all the possible values. Upon
selection of a specific category, a SubCategory CF would be populated
with only the values that make sense for the selected category.

I checked the wiki but failed to find something resembling this case.
I’m thinking about implementing the following:

  • Two CFs with the union of the possible values for each
  • A custom action that will reject tickets with invalid combinations of
    CFs or at least, prevents ticket creation
  • JavaScript Fu to really populate the values of the second CF based on
    the selection on the first one

Does anybody have any suggestion?

Best regards and thanks in advance.

-lem

Hi there,

A customer requested to have a “multi-level” ticket classification.
Issues would be assigned an “activity type” through a custom field.
Then, a second custom field would need to be set, whose values depend on
the first.

Think of:

NetworkFailure → (Layer2, Layer3, …)
AppFailure → (LockUp, WrongOutput, …)

The left hand side would be a category (first level of classification)
and the right hand side would be a sub-category (second level of
classification).

This means you could have a ticket with Category=NetworkFailure and
SubCategory=Layer3 but you could never have a ticket with
Category=NetworkFailure and SubCategory=WrongOutput.

Ideally, we want to model this using custom fields. At the start, a
Category CF would be displayed, with all the possible values. Upon
selection of a specific category, a SubCategory CF would be populated
with only the values that make sense for the selected category.

Play with the new multi-level custom fields we introduced in 3.8.6 or
so. They may be what you want.