3.8. Merging Duplicate Tickets

Sometimes, multiple people submit reports for the same problem. This is especially likely if you've got a big problem in a busy environment. When it happens, you need a way to tell RT that the multiple tickets are actually the same request. RT lets you collapse tickets together in a process called Merging.

Go to the Links form for the ticket you want to merge. This form has two major sections, Current Links and New Links, as shown in Figure 3-9. The Current Links section describes any existing relationships that the ticket has and provides a simple editing interface. The New Links section allows you to define new relationships.

To merge one ticket into another, enter the number of the target ticket in the Merge Into Field, and submit the form. You can merge any number of tickets this way, although you need to merge them one at a time.

Once the tickets are merged, displaying either ticket number will display the metadata and history for all the merged tickets. Any further changes to any of the merged tickets also will show up on all the merged tickets. Figure 3-10 shows the merge transaction in the status listing of a merged ticket.

Figure 3-9. Ticket links form

Figure 3-10. Merge transaction in ticket status