Case Merge

About the Merge Operation

When you merge two cases, you combine them into one record, to reduce duplication. (This option exists only for Cases object.)

When you merge cases, you have two options:

• A one-click "standard" merge that does everything automatically
• An advanced merge that gives you more fine-grained control over the merge process

Note: The merge includes all fields defined for the object, not just those that are displayed onscreen.

Working with the Merge Operation

In order to merge cases, Users must have Update permission for the object in Access to Records Owned by Others Within the Team and Delete permission for the object in Record Access Permissions

To merge two cases:

1. Click the Cases tab.
   A list of cases is displayed.
2. Select a case
3. In the sidebar, click Actions
4. Choose the Merge option
5. Select the record to merge with (the target record)
6. Optionally, click Advanced Merge to get more control over the merge process.
7. Click [Merge] to complete the operation.

Standard Merge

With the standard (non-advanced) merge:

• The current record is moved to the recycle bin.
• The target record appears in the UI, with its fields unchanged.

(If needed, values from fields in the old record can be retrieved from the recycle bin.)

• The summary and description from the current record are added to the target-record’s activity history.
• The current record’s activity history is added to the target record.
• The target record's processes and their tasks are retained. The current record's processes are discarded.
• The target record's SLAs and any tasks that stemmed from them are retained. Those in the current record are discarded. Tasks that stemmed from those processes are added to the target record.
• Manually-defined tasks from the target record are retained. Similar tasks created for the current record are added to the target record. The owner of the target record becomes the owner of those tasks.
• Attachments from the current record are added to the target record.
• Hours logged against the current record are added to the target record.

Advanced Merge

AgileApps had the Standard and Advanced Case Merge feature where in both the cases, the source case record was deleted after the merge operations. In this release, we have made some changes to the Advanced Merge to allow for source record to be retained after the merge, for later referral.

Old behavior of Advanced Merge

When you click Advanced Merge, additional tabs appear:

• Fields

"Read-only fields" (whose values can be set only by the system), and fields that are hidden based on the user's Role are not displayed. The target record's values are retained.

Other field values from source and target records are displayed. Choose which ones to use. (Target-record values are the default.)

For fields containing text or rich text, an additional Append option appears.

When that option is chosen, the text in the source field is appended to the text in the target field.

• Tasks

A list of single-step tasks that were manually added to the current record is displayed.

By default, all of them are added to the merged record. Unclick any you do not want.

Those selected are added to the target record. The target record's owner becomes their owner.

Process tasks, tasks created by SLAs, and multi-step tasks are not shown. Any such tasks defined for the target record are retained. Any defined for the current record are deleted.

Then, when you click [Merge]:

• The current record is moved to the recycle bin.
• The target record appears in the UI, with the field values that were selected.
• The current record’s activity history is added to the target record.
• The target record's processes and their states are retained. Those in the current record are discarded.
• The target record's SLAs and their states are retained. Those in the current record are discarded.
• Attachments from the current record are added to the target record.
• Hours logged against the current record are added to the target record.

New behavior of Advanced Merge

The new behavior introduces an extended object-level capability to the user where she can configure whether the source case record should be deleted or retained during the Case Merge operation.

Important points to note:

• This feature is available for Service Desk and Dynamic Case management applications only.
• The system introduces an additional configuration for each Case & CaseType object under the corresponding object-properties. This configuration will be made available only when user selects Advanced Case Merge option in Case Merge dialog.
• The Case & CaseType object properties will now have 'Delete source case' and 'Retain source case' radio buttons under > {object} > Object Properties> Merge Settings section as 'After Advanced Case Merge'.