Reopening an incident

Release version: Xanadu

Updated August 1, 2024

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Summary of Reopening an Incident

Customers can reopen an incident if they are not satisfied with its resolution. This can be done through a resolution notification email or directly from the incident in Incident Management. Reopening an incident changes its status from Resolved to In Progress.

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Key Features

You can reopen an incident via the Reopen incident link in the resolution email or the incident form.
Only users with the incident write access role can reopen incidents.
If an already closed incident is reopened via email, a new incident is created with selected field values copied from the closed incident.
To reopen via email, add Please reopen to the subject line.
Reopen count, Last reopened by, and Last reopened at fields are automatically populated for tracking and reporting purposes.

Key Outcomes

Reopening incidents allows for better tracking of unresolved issues and facilitates communication with support teams. Users will receive notifications and have access to audit information that helps in generating reports on reopened incidents. Note that ESS users cannot resolve, reopen, or close major incidents, even if they are the caller.

Reopen an incident from the resolution notification email or from the incident to get answer for your query.

When an incident is resolved, an incident resolution email notification is sent to you. If you are not satisfied with the resolution of your incident, you can request to reopen the incident using any of the following methods:

Select the Reopen incident link from the incident resolution email notification.
Select the Reopen incident option on the incident form in Incident Management.

Once an incident is reopened, the state of the incident is then changed from Resolved to In Progress. You can reopen a resolved incident if you are an agent with incident write access (sn_incident_write) role.

If the incident is already closed and you request to reopen the incident by replying to the resolution notification email, a new incident is opened with selected field values from the closed incident. The values of the fields that you mention in the List of fields (comma-separated) to copy from the original incident when an incident is reopened by email property (com.snc.incident.clone_fields_on_reopen) are copied from the closed incident to the new incident. Add the text Please reopen to the subject line of the email.

If an incident is reopened by a user after it was resolved, the Last reopened by and the Last reopened at fields are automatically populated with the name of the person who reopened it and the date and time when the incident is reopened. During audit, this information helps you to generate various reports for reopened incidents.
On the Incident form, there is an existing field named Reopen count. Incidents that were reopened prior to the Kingston release, may already have some non-zero values in the Reopen count field while the values in the new fields, Last reopened by and the Last reopened at are null. For incidents that are reopened after the Kingston release, the Last reopened by and the Last reopened at fields are populated.
If you do not have any roles in the system (ESS) and you change the incident state to Resolved, you receive a notification with a Reopen incident link.
If you do not have any roles in the system (ESS) and you are the caller, you can click Reopen incident on the incident form to reopen the incident. Add the text Please reopen to the subject line of the email.

Note:
An ESS user is not able to resolve, reopen, or close a major incident even if the user is the caller.