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Managing incidents › Incident Management › IT Service Management
Release: Australia · Updated: 2025-01-30 · Official documentation · View source

Synchronization between a parent and a child incident

The parent and the child incidents are synchronized such that the state of a child incident changes depending on the state of the parent incident.

Parent StateOn Hold Reason \(Parent\)Child StateOn Hold Reason \(Child\)
In ProgressNAIn ProgressNA
On HoldAwaiting Change/Awaiting Problem/Awaiting VendorSame as parentSame as parent
On HoldAwaiting callerNot updatedNot updated
ResolvedNAResolved.The Activity log in the child incident form is updated with the resolution notes copied from the parent Incident.NA
ClosedNANot closed.Child incidents must always be closed by the caller or by the system based on the auto-closure property.NA
CanceledNANANA

Note:

This table applies only to standard incident life cycle states. When a parent incident is proposed or accepted as a major incident, the states of any associated child incidents do not change automatically. For more information, see Managing major incidents.

When an incident has a child incident, the following actions take place:

  • If an ITIL user reopens the parent incident, then the parent incident as well as the child incident reopens. Both the parent and the child incident state is set to In Progress.
  • If an ESS user reopens the parent incident, the parent incident state is set to In Progress but the child incident is not reopened.