Close cases

In some situations you may want the option to close cases in your application. For example, if a user leaves your organization or has not logged in for more than 90 days, you may want to close their User case. Similarly, if an order has been completed or a claim has been paid, you may want to close the Order or Claim case to reflect that there is nothing more to be done to it. For casetypes that represent a process - such as sending an email - you can close a case to indicate that the process has been completed.

Note:

Closing a case was previously referred to as "finishing" a case. Closing cases is only relevant for standard casetypes and system service casetypes. You cannot close a page casetype.

Effect of closing a case

When you close a case:

• The Date closed in the case metadata is set to the current date.
• Any open tasks on the current case are cancelled (except those activities for which Do not cancel activity when closing the case was enabled). This means that any mandatory or optional tasks that have been initiated but have not yet been completed are removed and any rules on subsequent activity stages are ignored.
• New tasks cannot be started with two exceptions. Users can start a new Reopen case activity (if configured) and any other activities for which Allow on closed case is enabled.
• The casetype activity that created the case progresses to the When done stage:
  • Any triggers or other logic applied to the When done stage of the casetype activity are initiated. This is useful if you want to initiate or perform other activities each time a case is closed.
  • If you have configured a Result form for the case being closed, the attribute values contained in the form are passed to the casetype activity. To copy details from the result form to the parent case, either enable Automap out or add mappings for individual fields to the When done stage. Set the mapping To option to Casedata and select an attribute, and set the mapping From option to Task out and select the relevant field on the result form.
• The case is no longer listed in grids or picklists, unless the dataset has been configured to include closed cases. To include or exclude closed cases from a dataset, open the dataset and click the pencil icon to edit the properties.

Tip:

Closing a case does not delete the case or any of its associated data. The only way to delete cases from your application is to configure a data retention profile and apply it to a casetype. For example, you could configure a data retention profile to permanently delete all closed cases and their associated data after one year, and apply this to one or more casetypes.

Create an activity to close cases

To close a case you need to add a Close case activity to the casetype. You can generate the close activity automatically when you create a new casetype or you can add the activity to an existing casetype manually.

To create the activity manually:

1. Open the casetype and select the Activities tab.
2. Click Add activity and enter a suitable name.
3. From the Type list, select Process block.
4. From the Process block type list select Close case.
5. To customize the text that is displayed when a user closes a case, use the Supporting text fields.
6. Click Submit. The activity is added to the casetype.

Once you have created the Close case activity, configure the activity rights to give the appropriate user roles permission to close cases and then make the activity available from the casetype view or a grid widget.

Alternatively, you can trigger the Close case activity automatically from another activity. For example, you may want to close a case automatically when one or more other activities have been completed, or a certain number of days after the case was last updated.

To close a case automatically once another activity has been completed:

• For form, event and process block activities, add a trigger to the When done stage of the parent form, event, or process block activity.
• For casetype activities:
  • To close the case when the new case is created, add a trigger to the On submit stage of the parent casetype activity.
  • To close the case when the case that was created by the casetype activity is closed, add a trigger to the When done stage of the parent casetype activity. This is useful if you have a number of related casetypes (such as customers and subscriptions, or employees and devices) and you want to close the related case(s) automatically when a case is closed. For example, you might want to close a Customer case when the last Subscription case is closed.

For more information about triggering one activity from another, see Chain activities together.

Reopen closed cases

In some situations you may want to reopen a case that has been closed. For example, if a customer becomes active again or a claim needs to be reviewed, reopening the existing case gives you access to any existing data, including the IDs of any related cases (if these were recorded as attributes on the closed case).

To reopen a closed case, add a Reopen case activity to the casetype:

1. Open the casetype and select the Activities tab.
2. Click Add activity and enter a suitable name.
3. From the Type list, select Process block.
4. From the Process block type list select Reopen case.
5. If you plan to grant users permission to reopen cases manually, ensure Allow on closed case is enabled. (This option is not required to trigger the reopen case activity automatically.)
6. Click Submit. The activity is added to the casetype.

Configure the activity rights to give the appropriate user roles permission to reopen cases and then add the activity to a casetype view or grid widget. You can also trigger the Reopen case activity from another activity if required.

To reopen other cases related to the current case (such as a customer's previous orders), create the relevant Reopen case activities for those casetypes. Then, add triggers to perform those activities to the When done stage of the Reopen case activity for the current case.