Create Relationships Between Incidents

You can link an infrastructure incident to one or more child incidents.

Only an infrastructure incident can be a parent incident. You can only link an incident to an incident that has no child incidents of itself. It is also not possible to select a Closed incident as a parent or child.

To make the current incident a parent to another existing incident, complete the following steps:

1. Navigate to Incident Management → All Incidents and open an incident that you want to be a parent incident.
2. Open the Related Records tab.
3. Click the magnifier icon next to the Child incidents field. The incident list will appear.
4. Select the necessary incidents from the list.
   • You can select more than one item; all of them will be children for the parent incident.
5. Click the Select items button at the top.
   • The Level of dependency field is automatically populated with the Parent value and becomes read-only.
6. Click Save or Save and exit to apply the changes.

To make the current incident a child to another existing incident, complete the following steps:

1. Navigate to Incident Management → All Incidents and open an incident that you want to be a child incident.
2. Open the Related Records tab.
3. Click the magnifier icon next to the Parent incident field.
4. Select the incident you want to be the parent for the current incident.
   • The Level of dependency field is automatically populated with the Child value and becomes read-only.
5. Click Save or Save and exit to apply the changes.

Related Records for parent and child incidents

Type	Description
Level of dependency	The field is displayed on the form, automatically filled in, and made read-only when either the Parent incident or the Child incidents field is filled in. Possible values: Parent – one or more child incidents are related to the current incident. Child – a parent incident is specified for the current incident. The field is hidden from the form if neither the Parent incident nor the Child incidents field is filled in.
Parent incident	Specify the parent incident of the current incident. You can only specify an infrastructure incident that is not a child incident. The field is hidden from the form and read-only if the Child incidents field is filled in. The values of some parent incident fields are automatically passed onto the corresponding fields of its child incident.
Child incidents	Specify the child incidents of the current incident. The field is hidden from the form if the Parent incident field is filled in or if the current incident is not an infrastructure incident.
Child incident count	If the current incident has child incidents, the field is automatically filled in with their number. This value cannot be edited. The field is hidden from the form if the Parent incident field is filled in, or if the incident is not an infrastructure one.

You can also create a child incident by clicking New in the Child Incidents related list on the parent incident form.

Passing of related record values from parent to child incidents

If the incident is a child incident (its Parent incident field is filled in), some of its fields are filled in with the parent incident data and can only be edited by admin users:

• State

  info

  If the parent incident moves into the Completed state, its Closure code, Closure notes, Resolved by, and Resolved at field values are copied into the corresponding fields of its child incidents.

• Urgency

• Priority

• Impact

• Assigned user

• Assignment group

  note

  To disable the automatic population of the Assignment group and Assigned user fields on child incident forms, set the value of the itsm.itsm_incident.map_assigned_group_and_user_to_children system property to false.

• Related problems

• Related user query

• Related service request

• Solved by changes

• Caused by changes

• Related articles

• Known error

The fields are automatically completed both in new and existing child incidents. If the corresponding fields change values in the parent incident, the fields in the child incident are updated accordingly. The new values from the parent incident fully overwrite the current values in the child incident.

If you change the Parent incident, the values of these fields in the child incident are overwritten with the values from the new parent incident.

If you clear the Parent incident field when creating an incident:

• those of its fields that were populated with the parent incident data are cleared. They also become available for editing, except for its Priority, as well as Impact if it is determined based on the Impact Matrix.
  • if the itsm.itsm_incident.map_assigned_group_and_user_to_children system property is disabled, the child incident's Assigned user and Assignment group stay the same as before the Parent incident was selected.
• the incident's State changes to Registered.

If you clear the Parent incident field in an already created incident:

• its Related problems, Solved by changes, Caused by changes, Related articles, and Known error fields get cleared.
• other fields that were automatically filled in with the parent incident data keep these values. They become available for editing, except for the Related user query and Related service request fields if this incident was created from a user query or service request.

Moreover, when you add Work notes for the parent incident, this comment will be passed onto its child incidents. The callers get a notification that a comment was added.