When analysts create new incidents, Service Manager automatically notifies you if any parent incidents exist with the same classification category. The purpose of the notification is to help you combine incidents into parent child groups where a common underlying issue exists. Later, you can use the parent incident to manage the group of incidents as a whole and to serve as a single point of resolution.

You can use the following procedure to manually create a new incident and then link it to a related parent.

To link a new incident to a parent incident

  1. In the Service Manager console, select Work Items.

  2. In the Work Items pane, expand Incident Management, and then click an incident view such as All Incidents.

  3. In the Tasks pane, under Incident Management, click Create Incident.

  4. In the Tasks pane, click Apply Template.

  5. Under Templates in the Apply Template dialog box, select an incident template, such as Software Issue Incident Template and then click OK.

  6. When the template applies a classification category or if you manually select a classification category that is in use by an active parent incident, a message appears in the incident form banner. You can optionally click the link to create a link from the new incident to the existing parent. If you are linking the new incident to a parent incident, perform one of the appropriate following sub steps.

    • If the parent incident is resolved, in the Link to parent incident dialog box, click Link to parent and resolve incident.

    • Click the link to create the link between the new incident and the parent incident.

  7. In the Title box, type a new description or modify the description inserted by the template.

  8. In the Affected user box, select the user who reported this incident.

  9. In the Alternate Contact Method box, enter additional contact information for the affected user (optional).

  10. If necessary, click the Related Items tab.

  11. Optionally, in the Attached Files area, click Add.

  12. Optionally, in the Open dialog box, select the file that you want to attach to this incident, and then click Open. For example, select the screen shot of an error message that the affected user has received.

  13. Click OK.

To validate creation of a new incident

  1. In the Service Manager console, click Work Items.

  2. In the Work Items pane, expand Incident Management, and then click All Incidents. New incidents appear in the All Incidents view.