Overview

Feature description:

The new Merge Tickets feature in HappyFox allows users to merge two tickets that exist in their HappyFox account. Typical use cases for merging tickets might be, when a customer has created multiple support tickets related to the same issue and the support agents would like to maintain focus on just one of the tickets and resolve it, or, in the case of Twilio Integration, where a voice ticket is created and the ticket is related to another existing ticket in the suppost system.

Scope

Feature considerations:

1. The merge action is only possible on tickets created by the same contact in your HappyFox account. The contact should have the same email ID or have the same name and phone number. 
2. The merge feature will be visible on the ticket detail page of a ticket, only for those staff who have the ticket level permission to merge tickets. 
3. The logged in staff can merge tickets only between categories that he/she have access to.

Terminology:

1. For the scope of this document and feature (in discussions) the ticket that is being merged is referred to as the Loser Ticket and the ticket which it is merged into is referred to as the Winner Ticket.

Merge notification:

1. We have now introduced a new notification for the merge feature. When one ticket is merged to another, the notification is triggered and sent via email to all staff members who are a part of the winner category and the loser category. While the recipient list is pre determined, the subject and message of the notification template can be edited. As with other notifications, each category can have a different template, which can be customized and saved. 
2. There is also a staff level setting for enabling or disabling the merge notification, in the My Settings page of each logged in staff.

Tickets, messages and updates:

1. Merging one ticket to another has two different behavioral cases. When a ticket is merged to another, if the loser ticket contains only one message (which will be the first customer message), this message will be carried over to the winner ticket as a single update and the ticket will be merged. If the loser ticket contains more than one update (the other updates can be client updates or staff updates, including private notes), then no update will be carried forward to the winner ticket. 
2. When a single message is carried forward from the loser to the winner, the attachments with that message will also be brought to the winner ticket. 
3. When the single update from the loser ticket is brought over to the winner, there will be a mention of the original time and date of the loser ticket, which will be included in the activity log. This can be useful for tracking purposes.
4. Once the merge action is performed, the loser ticket is set to the highest completed state (status) in the system and the add update and add private note actions are blocked from the staff. Changing the status, priority, assignee or category is allowed on the loser ticket.
5. The smart rules and SLA's set on the system will not apply on loser tickets, which have been merged. The existing SLA breaches will also be cleared from the loser ticket. This is so that the actionable SLA objectives can now be performed from the winner ticket.
6. The loser ticket and winner ticket will have mention of the ticket that it has been merged to or merged from, respectively, in the activity log.
7. An optional note, Merge Note can be added while a ticket is merged. The merge note can list possible reasons why the ticket is being merged. This merge note will be added as a part of the winner ticket, along with the other messages. The merge note and the activity log will appear in a combined manner, if the note is added. In either case, the time of the merge action will be a part of the update, displayed on the left side of the update box, in the usual manner that time of updates is displayed.
8. All future updates sent via email for the loser ticket (by the customer or staff) will be appended to the winner ticket automatically. No updates will be possible on the loser ticket from the customer panel, when the customer tries to add an update. 
9. The link to the winner ticket will be displayed at the bottom of the loser ticket, in the ticket detail page. This is true for the staff panel and the customer panel.
10. It is not possible to merge tickets to an already merged loser ticket. Transitive merges or cyclical merges, where ticket A is merged to B and then B is merged to C, which in turn is merged to A, is not possible
11. Deletion of tickets - When a winner ticket (to which one or more tickets have been merged) is deleted, all the associated loser tickets and their updates will be deleted. This information is provided when the user tries to delete the ticket from either of the ticket list or ticket detail pages. Loser tickets cannot be deleted. Loser tickets can not be selected for mass actions on the ticket list page. If the winner ticket must be deleted, we recommend unmerging the loser ticket and then proceeding with the delete action. 
12. Unmerging - Any ticket(s) that have been merged to another ticket, can be unmerged from the list of merged tickets displayed at the bottom of the ticket detail page. When a ticket is unmerged, all actions on the loser ticket become possible. The activity log will display the unmerge message too. All past actions of merging and possibly, bringing over the single update(as mentioned in one of the cases in 1), will be retained on the winner ticket. When the unmerge action is done, the loser ticket is set to the default status in the instance.
13. Changing the contact on the winner ticket is not possible.