ServiceDesk

Does anyone know if the bug described in TECH121957 “Using Find Ticket causes a redirect window to open an unrelated ticket” has been addressed in v7.1? I heard a rumor that in v7.1 you can go to Admin->Portal->Master Settings and expand the Reports Settings then change the SuggestNextProcessID Interval (in sec) from 5 to 0 will fix this issue. When I try to set it to 0 it tells me “You must enter a number greater than zero” and won’t let me save. Any help greatly appreciated as this little gem now shows up for end users as well as technicians when they open one of their closed incidents and happened to have a task waiting for them on another incident.

I still wonder what value this feature has? A software application should NEVER assume it knows what you want to do and take you there, it could provide an option to go to waiting tasks but to automatically redirect them (without them hitting the cancel button first) is ludicrous! Developer responsible, take out a ruler and slap yourself on the wrist, twice!

The TECH article says that there is still no known resolution but whilst this could be out of date the 7.1 release notes do not specify that this issue has been fixed.  I haven't got 7.1 installed so I can't confirm but it doesn't look like this has been fixed.

This feature does have some value if you are working in an environment with large volumes being handled by a relatively large team with limited responsibility e.g. a call centre churning out tickets.  Rather than having them hunt around for tickets it makes sense to provide a feature that takes them to oldest task that needs to be dealt with.

However in practical situations this doesn't really have any value and I agree it would be very nice to turn it off :)

Although something to note, the countdown only appears on tickets which you open from the find ticket or open ticket web-parts.  If you open a ticket by clicking on a link or from a report for example then it isn't displayed.  So this means that you can work-around this to some degree by providing users with a report that displays details of all their tickets and allowing them to click the process ID to open their ticket.

OK this works but be careful as it is not recommended by anyone official as of this time. Simply go to SQL Server Management Studio and open the ServiceDesk database find the table named MasterSettings and right click on it and select 'edit top 200 rows' (there should only be 1) find the column labeled 'SuggestNextProcessIDInterval' and change the value from 5 to 0. Reset IIS and restart server extentions and problem solved.

[Note: please post any issues side effects you encounter by doing this I haven't seen any yet but you never know]

Well that didn't work! It seems it doesn't always avoid the issue, for example if you open a ticket that is assigned to someone else for resolving it still pops up, Doh!

Symantec, really, can't you fix this? Or give us the work around?

I can see it being an option, as if you stick with hardcore ITIL and are militant about it since once the ticket is gone, its 'gone'.  So it brings up the next available ticket you have access to.

So i see a purpose for it to exist, but not having the ability to turn it off is just totally insane. Now that said, I heard it was actually a bug in the Workflow engine instead of a feature, and also that it was to be fixed in 7.1  I guess not :)

I found that on the URL link in the ticket assigned email there is a parameter included, "SuggestNextProcessID=1", which when removed does indeed stop the redirects from happening on those tickets, problem is in the send mail component executed on creation of new incident uses the ProcessViewerPageURL variable for the link and I don't really know how to modify its contents.