When using Service Tickets, users have had the ability to trigger an action called "Create New Ticket," but the date selector was hard coded. Now, users can select custom dates for the new ticket based on a number of criteria.

Service Ticket Templates can be edited by going to Settings > Database Setup > Services & Transactions > Service Ticket Templates. From this window, users can select an existing Service Ticket Template or create a new one. Actions for Service Tickets can be set by editing the Template, selecting the "Actions" tab, and selecting "Add Action." The action of interest for this article is the Create New Ticket action.

Actions

Triggers: Actions can be trigger on Ticket Creation, Ticket Iterations, or Ticket Completion. As it sounds, this indicates when the action will begin. If selecting the trigger on Ticket Iteration, ensure that the ticket allows iteration and has an iteration label which can be set on the "General" tab.

Cycle: A cycle is a sort of "group" of actions, and determines which group of actions will occur first. In the Create New Ticket Custom Dates example we will look at, our group of actions includes a Create New Ticket action and a Set Value Date action. Groups are determined by the integer value in the Cycle field. The chosen integer orders the cycles so that one group of actions may take place before or after another group of actions.

Order: Order determines the ordering of actions within a cycle. In the Create New Ticket Custom Dates example we will look at, we want the Set Value Date action to take place before the Create New Ticket action so that we

can set a custom date before the new ticket is created.

Options: Each action has a unique set of options that can be chosen. Hover over the action for a tool tip explaining what the option does.

Create New Ticket

The Create New Ticket action has an additional field called "New Ticket Template" which allows the user to set the template of the newly created ticket. Options for this action include the ability to set either a hard-coded start or stop date, or to set a custom date.

Hard-code: Hard-coded dates simply mean that the date will always be based on the chosen logic and that the user cannot manually override this setting. Options like Start Date = Current Start Date or Start Date + X Days are hard-coded.

Custom: Custom dates require a second action called the Set Value Date. The options that allow a custom date selection for the Create New Ticket action are Start/Stop Date = Value and Start/Stop Date = X Day of the Week of Start/Stop Week.

Start/Stop Date = Value: The date value set in the Set Value Date action will determine the start or stop date of the new ticket.
Start/Stop Date = X Day of the Week of Start/Stop Week: The date value set in the Set Value Date action will first select a date and then the value set in this option (0-6 where 0 = Sunday and 6 = Saturday) determines the start or stop date of the new ticket. For example, a date value set for 5/1 and a value of 5 (Friday) will make the new ticket set for 5/5.

Set Value Date

The Set Value Date action has an additional field called "Value Category." This is used to connect the date value with the Create New Ticket action and is very important to set. In the following example, the Value Category is set to 1. Then, in the Create New Ticket action, the option's Value is set to 1. This is how they become connected.

There are numerous options available for this action. Most are self-explanatory, but below is a list of several with an explanation for clarity.

Default = Start/Stop Date: Self explanatory, however note that if a ticket was created using both the CreateNewTicket and SetValueDate actions, and a date was set into the future, triggering this action/option will select the Start Date of the original ticket (not the one you are iterating from).
- I.e., A ticket created on 4/24 was iterated for the next Friday of the week which was 4/28. Iterating from the latter ticket on 4/28 will still populate a start date of 4/24 using this option.
Set Step Days: Changes the number of day increments on the calendar when selecting the + or - signs.
Disable Manual Values: Disables the manual selection on the calendar. Requires only in/decremental changes.
Disable Increment/Decrement: Disables the in/decrement day selector (+ or - signs).
All Minimum/Maximum options constrain the date selector to being after X (min) or before X (max).
All Minimum/Maximum "Date + {X}" require a Minimum/Maximum option to be set.
All Minimum/Maximum options must have a Default option set before in the configuration list.

Example

Setting up a custom date for the "Create New Ticket" action requires both the action "Set Value Date" and the action "Create New Ticket" to operate within the same cycle. The "Value Category" field in the Set Value Date action is important, since this value is used in the Create New Ticket action to correlate the two. An example setup for Set Value Date is imaged below:

Note the Cycle = 1 and Order = 0. Value Category = 1.
Now for the Create New Ticket action options, the "Value" corresponds to the Value Category setting, so I enter 1.

Both of my actions are triggered on Iteration. This creates a workflow that follows:

Create the ticket using this template.
Iterate to create new ticket, prompting the "Set Date" action (I named my action Set Date).
Set the desired date and continue.