We are currently using a custom dropdown list for Primary, Secondary and Tertiary Root Causes on incidents.
My question is this - if we modify the list removing one or more selections, will closed/archived tickets retain the originally selected item or will they then be blank (and thus cause potential problems with historical reporting)?
Hi John -
Your instincts are correct – if you remove items from a drop-down field, the closed/archived tickets will retain the associated tags that went with those items (since closed/archived tickets are immutable), but since those tags no longer correspond to an item in that field, the field value will show as a null value ('-'). Any business rules that make use of those items will also be affected.
One option would be to create an "ARCHIVED" or "OBSOLETE" item at the end of your drop-down items list, move the items you no longer are using to be nested under that, and perhaps add a prefix to the item names to distinguish them (but make sure you don't change the tags). See also: Best practices for altering your custom ticket fields