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Merge tickets
Idea shared by Zsolt Kiss - 6/14/2014 at 8:58 AM
Completed
Hello ST team
 
In the very old 2.x smarter ticket, the users had possibility to merge ticket, and sign which ticker number be alive afterwards. Do you plan to put this feature into the Smarter Track also? Why did you get it out? I see that the Smarter track is more complex system but the present add a "related item" is not the most efficient way to track back an ticket in that case if I would like to check the history, because i lost the continuity at the first related item.
Please be aware, that the main part of the custumers doesn't know the "reply" function of the e-mail clients. :-/ all the more the "forward" feature :-) which always occurs new and new  and new tickets, in spite of the theme is the same.
 
So the merge ticket could be a very very useful feature.
 
What do you think?

20 Replies

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0
So is there still no feature for merging tickets?
5
I too would like the ability to merge a ticket.  Sometimes we will have customers who send 2 or 3 emails with the same question. 
2
Tim Uzzanti Replied
9/15/2014 at 6:36 AM
Employee Post
Merge tickets was a highly requested feature to REMOVE and REPLACE with Relating tickets.  There are a number of reasons and to remember them all from so long ago would be difficult.  But, one of the primary reasons is how it would make Reports completely inaccurate. There were a number of issues when Custom Field data was different from Ticket to Ticket.  The ability to Merge a ticket resulted in a removal of another ticket or the change in the overall data submitted by the customer.  This resulted in SmarteTrack not following certain compliance and auditing requirements. 
 
There are a number of other reasons, but these were some of the more common problems and caused the shift to Relating all data in the system.  We also liked our original concept of Merge but changed on numerous long and drawn out discussions with customers.  This request is Declined based on this information and asI remember other reasons, I will post them.
 
Lastly, a very common request is to have an Organization level in SmarterTrack that all tickets, chats, calls etc. can be related to.  You would define an Organization like ABC.com in your system and all their different phone numbers, emails etc.  You will be able to report on that organization and see how much traffic occurs on a week, month, year basis etc.  The more you define about the Organization, the more data that will be automatically associated to the Organization.  This allow you accurately report how much an Organization may contact you or cost you over a day, week, month, year etc!  By looking at the Organization, you will also be able to see duplicate tickets or the number of times you needed to relate tickets or communication.  You will be able to see all that history and maybe the individuals within that organization that do this on a repetitive basis and now be able to contact them and change that behavior.  And more importantly, the ability for certain people within that ABC.com Organization to see what others are requesting within the Organization to help avoid duplicate requests!
 
Hope this helps,
 
Tim Uzzanti
Tim Uzzanti CEO SmarterTools Inc. (877) 357-6278 www.smartertools.com
8
Hello
 
I agree, the merge ticket feature is nearly a mandatory function to be able to manage the support tickets in the system when allowing email communication on tickets. The amount of orphan tickets that are continually created makes the tracking of support even harder. The notion that merging a ticket impacts the reporting and audibility is really a side step to the problem that the users of the system are seeing. As we are now reporting on tickets that are actually not new independent tickets and this does not actually provide the actual support ticketing load and impacts the ticket response time charts as these tickets are closed quickly down etc. This side of the equation is far more important to be able to manage the actual rather then a blend of..... well we actual had X tickets but due to the orphan tickets we have a bloated number of Y tickets.
 
We have moved from Zoho Support to SmarterTrack and this is clearly a missing piece in the product that needs to be addressed. Yes, Zoho had this feature. The Admin User should have the ability to choose if they want to enable Merging of tickets and accept that some of the reasons why you don't want to implement it will be audibility due to changing of the data to associate it to a single ticket.
 
ST - Can you please re review this Declined status of this idea.
 
Users of ST, if the merge feature is something that would be of use to you as well click on the like option in show of support.
 
Thanks
 
Steven
1
I would also like to see this feature. There are ways around custom fields not matching, and having a conflict method. We get duplicate tickets, or tickets that are just follow ups, and this is a STANDARD feature with all other ticket products.

As such a fundamental feature it is weird that you can't do this. Relating the ticket is one thing, but that doesn't remove them from the system. That just help organize them and there is a huge time resource waste on trying to clear these tickets out especially with mandatory custom fields.
1
It should be important to add as well, that in order to relate the tickets you have to also go find the other ticket, then type in or copy and paste the ticket number. You don't even have such basic functionality as selecting two tickets and going "relate items" with the ability to close one of them instantly.

This is just like Google not allowing users to change Conversation view for years.
 
This is a base function of every other ticket program.
0
How typical of SmarterTools - the thread has several people begging to add an essential feature and the boss says "not gonna do it!"... Have a look at what your competition is offering - eventually you are going to lose your clients to them. It's not just your biggest customers who should be getting your attention. I'm not even going to bring up the search feature that's been frigging broken almost a year now!
1
Sorry guys, but not having this feature is really difficult.  So much that we struggle using the software on occasions.  Perhaps this can be something that is enabled for specific Brands/Departments/Groups?  They you have 2 happy customer groups?
1
ST Guys, Is there any movement here in the roadmap? We are going to run a review in the next few months and want to know if anything is changing in this space as this will drive our ongoing use. This is a major pain point and we know it is covered in other products.
 
Steven
2
Employee Replied
7/27/2015 at 3:44 PM
Employee Post
Hello All,
I  am happy to inform you that this feature has been slated for the next major version of SmarterTrack (12.x)! 
    This had been a heated debate internally due to potential side effects in reporting historical data and statistics.  For example: If an agent were to have spent a lot of time on a ticket, his response times will now be associated with the primary ticket (meaning it won't show the same in the reports).  For the most part, we have resolved these concerns now, but we suggest that merging tickets be used mostly with new tickets that have few responses that need to be attached to tickets that have been worked on for a while.
    An explanation of how the feature will work is below (as it will be put into our online help later). Please comment if you have any suggestions or concerns.

Merging Tickets

Occasionally, you may wish to take two tickets and merge them together into one ticket.  This may happen, for instance, in cases like these:

 

  • A customer deletes the ticket number from their ticket email, so it creates a new one instead of appending their response to the old one

  • A customer starts two very similar tickets at once and you wish to combine them

  • A customer sends emails for the same issue to multiple departments in hopes of getting a response more quickly

 

To resolve these types of issues, you can use SmarterTrack’s Merge Tickets feature.  Merging is different than related items in that related items are simply pointers to the other tickets, but merging actually combines the tickets into one and completely discards the older ticket.

 

Merging works well for tickets without a lot of history to them.  If you merge two tickets that both have a lot of transfers or communication items, it may be more complicated to follow the conversation when reading the new merged ticket.  For that, use related items instead.

 

To merge tickets, select the tickets you wish to merge from the ticket grid, then go to Actions > Merge Tickets.  A popup will appear asking you which ticket should be the primary ticket.  The primary ticket is the one that will remain after the merging is complete.  All other selected tickets will have their data moved into the primary ticket, with the behavior listed below.

 

Once you’ve chosen the primary ticket, click on Complete Merge to finalize the process and close the popup.

Merging Behavior

The merged ticket will have the following characteristics:

 

  • Ticket properties like status, follow-ups, assigned agent, etc, all follow the primary ticket.

  • Custom fields all follow the primary ticket.

  • Ticket communication items, comments, attachments, and history will be merged for the two tickets.

  • Reports will no longer reference the old ticket, which means that timing reports may show less data than they did before the merge.

  • Surveys will be merged, so the merged ticket may contain more than one survey result.

  • A forwarder is recorded, so if the customer replies back using the old ticket number, the email will be correctly recorded in the new one instead.

  • When you merge two tickets with two users both users will be able to see full content of the merged ticket.
0
Hi Ashley

You have just made the ST community very happy with this update as it was a major problem with the management of tickets. We will be waiting in anticipation for the release of V12.

Thank you.
0
Excellent news!!! Thank you so much for making this change.
0
Employee Replied
7/29/2015 at 9:18 AM
Employee Post
Hello All,
As another update on this. I am exited to say, after further discussion, it has been decided to move Merging Tickets to SmarterTrack 11x!
Cheers,
 
0
Nice. Thanks Ashley. Very good news. I am sure you know the next question.....
0
User Replied
7/29/2015 at 9:42 AM
Ideally, it should be in the next version of 11x but I am unsure when the release for it will be.
0
Ashley the mind reader. :-)

Thank you Ashley. Much appreciated.
0
Awesome, can't wait. Great news on the 11x release. Thanks for the update Ashley.
0
Question: Is the Merge ticketing function available via the API?
As we've also found recently clients emailing multiple departments that same email, so we're looking to run in the background a process to identify same emails and merge them into one ticket.
-- Art
0
Andrea Free Replied
6/25/2018 at 1:17 PM
Employee Post
Hi Artur, we don't have a merge ticket API call at the moment. I've put in this request for you and will provide an update if it's added.
Andrea Free SmarterTools Inc. 877-357-6278 www.smartertools.com
0
Andrea Free Replied
8/9/2018 at 8:00 AM
Employee Post
Hello Artur, I've heard an update regarding a Merge Ticket API call. Due to the complexities involved in merging tickets, we do not intend to make this feature available via API. I apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.
Andrea Free SmarterTools Inc. 877-357-6278 www.smartertools.com
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