Considering 1/13/2023 Eric Seelye

4

Votes

Change behavior on Convert to reply in another ticket

Originally requested in December 2018, but it is still not implemented.

Background

When using the "Convert to reply in another ticket..." option, the destination ticket updates perfectly but the source (aka rogue) ticket that we convert to a reply is left in a confusing state.

Present functionality

Let's say we have ticket 1000 and a user forwards a meeting invitation intended for ticket 1000 but because the users just forwarded a generic email, Jitbit simply (and correctly) creates a new ticket 1001. So a technician converts 1001 to a reply on 1000 and now ticket 1000 has all relevant information for all subscribers. The problem is that JitBit completely hides 1001 and doesn't show what happened to ticket 1001. From a technician view it was deleted without reason. From a user perspective it's just gone. If the user later replies to an email related to ticket 1001 (they did get a new ticket notification after all) that reply will create yet another new ticket (aka 1002). Also if the user browses to ticket 1001, they don't get redirected to ticket 1000 and instead are left with the impression a technician deleted their ticket.

Desired functionality.

Let's first examine the Merge Tickets option.

For those that have never merged tickets, let's say we have ticket 2000 and 2001. 2001 is a duplicate and we want to merge it into 2000. Once we merge, Ticket 2001 has some beneficial functionality added to it. Anyone that emails replies to 2001 will see those replies automatically added to ticket 2000 by the JitBit application. Also if anyone browses to ticket 2001 they will be silently redirected to 2000. It's beautiful.

We would like this redirection logic added to the "converted to replies in another ticket..." option. This way, in our first example, anyone trying to interact with ticket 1001 will have their email replies and browser silently redirect them to 1000. This will streamline communications, avoid the extra work we are faced with an eliminate customer confusion.

convert duplicate merge move reply create

Eric Seelye 12/2/2025 1:37 PM

This is still a problem after 7 years and 3 years since I last re-posted it. It's now turning into an even bigger issue for us.

We have seen a huge increase in out-of-band tickets. It's due to how people outside our organization CC each other and essentially by-pass our helpdesk. This results in each email generating new ticket on our system. We cannot fix this errant behavior but we can use the Convert Ticket to a Reply in a new ticket function. That part works well but what happens to the errant ticket is not working for us.

All of these errant tickets show as DELETED but contain no information about what happened. This make it practically impossible for our internal staff to review tickets and know what happened to these. In fact we don't even know it was converted. We just know it's been deleted.

Requested programmatic change #1.
Add a system log entry to the errant ticket before it's deleted. Include in that System Log the ticket # so we know where to look for the ongoing conversation. This should be possible without materially changing how the helpdesk system works. (This becomes less important if the preferred change #2 below is implemented)

Requested programmatic change #2
Please treat these converted tickets (deleted) the same as those tickets that are merged. That means if someone tries to browse to or update the ticket that is no longer active (Deleted by converting) their browser and/or email update should silently land on the ticket where the deleted ticket data was migrated.

If for some reason #2 materially changes some other desired behavior perhaps you could make this a toggled setting.

Eric Seelye 1/7/2026 1:31 PM

I wanted to add screen shots demonstrating this issue because today we had a classic example.

Today we received a "New Ticket" from a user who should have replied to an existing ticket. No matter how hard we try, they are going to continue doing this.

So our technician used the handy option to "Convert to Reply in another ticket" but then our Helpdesk Manager was reviewing the emails he receives for new tickets and clicked on the link for the "new ticket" He is then presented with a "DELETED" and greyed out ticket. He knows the Technicians cannot delete tickets, but he also has nothing to tell him what happened. The Assigned To is blank, and there is no system message. For one that doesn't know better, it appears as if them ticket was ignored and just deleted. So now the manager has to do a search until he finds the ticket it was moved to. This isn't always obvious because highly active tickets may cause the ticket that was converted to a reply forced way down the list.

This is becoming a huge waste of time and really limits our ability to spot check and perform QA tasks.

I still want the auto-redirect as requested, but until then, can we at least have a System Message on the source ticket that says "(converted to ##nnnnnnnn)". Some day I'm going to have to explain to a client why we are deleting their tickets without acting on them and it puts me in a really difficult position because I have no practical way to show them that isn't the case.