Transition from the the Closed status without it stopping me being able to close tickets

[Luke Robertson]

I have an IT Helpdesk project. 

When a ticket is closed. Sometimes, a customer will comment on the closed ticket if they have further work to add to it. I would like this to reopen the ticket. 

I did this by creating an automation, which when a customer comments, it changes the status from 'Closed' to 'In Progress'. This is great and works, however when the transition from 'Closed' to 'In Progress' exists in my workflow, I cannot close any tickets. The state changes to closed, but the SLA timer does not end. I remove the transition, this then allows me to change the status to Closed and the SLA timer ends with the green tick. Obviously then the automation will fail though as no transition from Closed to In Progress exists. 

My question is is it possible to have a transition from the the Closed status without it stopping me being able to actually close tickets?

[Mark Segall · Accepted solution]

Hi @Luke Robertson and welcome to the community!

My first thought is that when you transition back to In Progress, the resolution field has not been cleared and your SLA is looking for that resolution to be set as the mechanism for stopping the SLA.  If this is the case, it could be as simple as adding a post function to clear the resolution on your transition from Closed to In Progress. 

This way, as the issue transitions once again to closed, the resolution will be set again and satisfy the SLA.

[Luke Robertson]

Hi Mark, thanks for your answer and your welcome. 

This was helpful as I hadn't done this, now the resolution field clears which allows it to go back into the queue for open tickets. So thank you for that!

Sadly SLA timer still doesn't end. To clarify, it's the 'Time to close after resolution' timer:

Also here is a screenshot of the workflow if that helps:

[Mark Segall]

Hmm... Was really hoping that would do the trick.  Can you please share a screenshot of the SLA configuration? 

[Luke Robertson]

Boom! Thanks for directing me there. I just needed to changed the SLA configuration for the Time to Close SLA. It wasn't set to end counting when status changed to close. Not sure why it did work previously without the transition away from Closed but no matter.

Previously I hadn't touched the SLA's. The project was made initially by a project manager colleague of mine and us techy guys are just picking it up from her and customizing it slowly so we are still learning!

Thanks again.

[Luke Robertson]

*deleted as same as reply to other comment*