In the ticket and work order based applications you can create one class of ticket from another, or you can create different classes of work order. For example, in the Service Requests application you can create an incident or a work order. This creates a relationship between the two records, this article will explore those different relationships.
Using the Create actions
In the Service Requests application, the Create action allows you to create a Service Request, Incident, Problem, Change, Release or Work Order. For many clients who use Maximo with no add-ons you will not have access to the Incident, Problem, Change and Release applications. If you are using the Health, Safety and Environment (HSE) add-on you will find these actions plus ones to create an Investigation or an Audit and Survey record.
The Create actions have no dialogs, you will receive a message at the top of the screen to say what record was created. This is easy to miss, but fear not, go to the Related Records tab and you can see the record created. When a new ticket or work order is created by these actions, they are using the autokey for the application to generate a new number. When you use the Create Service Request action from the Service Request application, Maximo navigates to the new Service Request.
In the Related Records tab, there are two table windows, one for Related Tickets and one for Related Work Orders. If I am creating a Work Order from a Service Request, then the Relationship Type is FOLLOWUP. If I navigate to the Work Order Tracking application which you can do from the Related Work Orders record, then you will see in the Related Tickets table window the Service Request with a Relationship Type of ORIGINATOR.
The Related Records tab is where you can navigate between records, so you could navigate from the Service Request to an Incident to a Problem to a Change record and while you are doing this Maximo keeps track of where you are through the breadcrumb control which you see in the top left of the screen. This would allow you to go back to the Incident record from the Change record or go right back to the original Service Request.
When you use the Create actions the data that is copied from one record to another is controlled by Crossover Domains:
- For one ticket created from another ticket it is called TCKT2TCKT.
- For a work order created from a ticket it is called TICKET2WO.
- For a work order created from another work order it is called WO2WO
- For a ticket created from a work order it is called WO2TCKT
The Reported Date, and on a ticket the Affected Date, are the date/time the new record is created. You’ll also find that the Classification and Specification attributes and values are copied to the record created.
The action Show Similar Tickets is used to check whether a received call is like another previously received. This uses the classification to identify similar tickets, it will exclude other tickets already related and will ignore tickets that are in history, which have reached closed state. Resolved tickets are included in the list presented in the dialog that opens. There is a button Relate Records which is used after you have selected the tickets that you wish to relate to the current ticket. Once related you will see the new record in the Related Records tab in the Related Tickets table and with a relationship type of RELATED.
The Show Similar Tickets dialog is controlled by a relationship called SIMILARTICKETS that can be configured if you wish to add additional criteria.
On the Service Group field in the detail menu there is an action called ‘View Related Records for Service Group’ which opens a dialog with multiple tabs. On the Tickets and Work Order tabs there is a button called ‘Relate Records’ which will create a relationship type of RELATED in a similar way to that for the Show Similar Tickets action.
On the Service field in the detail menu the action is called ‘View Related Records for Service’ and this also has a ‘Relate Records’ button.
Global Issues
When multiple people are identifying the same issue and have each raised a service request you can declare one of the service requests or a follow-up ticket as a Global Issue. This is effectively saying that I will now control the resolution using the ticket marked as the Global Issue. You can keep everyone informed of progress through general Tickets functionality, including through the work log, communication log and changes of status.
You will need to relate other tickets to the Global Issue Ticket using a relationship with a relationship type of RELATEDTOGLOBAL. You can do this from the main tab in the Service Requests application in the section called Global Issues and the field called Related to Global ID where there is a Select Value that shows all the ticket records that have been marked as a Global Issue.
If you are on the ticket that is marked as a Global Issue and you are using the Show Similar Tickets action, then another button appears ‘Relate Records to Global Issue’. This creates relationships with a relationship type of ISGLOBAL.
In the detail menu of the Service Groups and Service fields we have already discussed that there is an action to view related records and on these two dialogs if the current ticket is a Global Issue, then you will find a button ‘Relate Records to Global Issue’.
We now have a pair of relationship types that work together like ORIGINATOR and FOLLOWUP, this time they are RELATEDTOGLOBAL and ISGLOBAL. For example, a Service Request is related to an Incident that is marked as a Global Issue. On the Service Request the relationship type of the Incident record seen in the Related Tickets table is ISGLOBAL. If you were looking at the Incident record, the same table would show the Service Request with a relationship type of RELATEDTOGLOBAL.
It is quite possible that you start out relating similar tickets with a relationship type of RELATED and then at a later point you declare a Global Issue. Under these circumstances you would consider the relations with a relationship type of RELATED and probably choose to delete them and reinstate them as RELATEDTOGLOBAL so that status inheritance and visibility of work log and communication log records can be viewed from those tickets which are related to the global issue.
If you have followed this you will now realise that there are five relationship types, ORIGINATOR, FOLLOWUP, RELATED, RELATEDTOGLOBAL and ISGLOBAL. The last two of these do not exist for work order classes. When you create a follow up record or relate one ticket with another, two records are actually created in the RELATEDRECORD table, one for each side of the relationship.
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