Thanks for the suggestions, Mike. I can see how this would
work to link multiple Tickets to a Return and handle the repair activities.
However…
I should start by saying, “In my layman's opinion…”
…this seems to move acutely away from the intended use of
each of these entities, and raises more issues:
- The Area/Category/Issue listed in
the Defect would no longer match all of the Tickets they serve.
- Searches for Defects are impacted
negatively when maintenance repairs are also listed there since non-Defect
entries would now be listed with actual defects. In other words, mixing
non-defects into the Defects entities will muddy the waters for people
searching Defects for a solution to a problem via SpeedSearch.
- Assets listed with the repair
would now show up amongst actual defective parts, thus muddying the
defects reporting by product. (This cannot be addressed by changing the
Type of Defect to a “non-Defect option” since, out of multiple problems
being repaired, not all problems will share the same defect type.)
- A
significant workload increase for those entering return repairs will be
seen since every Return will require creation and completion of both the
Return and the Defect.
Lesser effects would be:
- Important aspects of handling the
Ticket (return status and shipping information) would no longer be visible
from each Ticket.
- When
looking at a Return, all of the Tickets associated with that Return cannot
be found via the Returns’ Defect Tab. (at least I have not been able to
open the Defect listed in the Returns’ Defects Tab.) In order to find
associated Tickets, finding all Defects listed with the Return would
require navigating to the correct return via the Defects List View or
Detail View Lookup window, a much longer process.
In our case, a Repair is always going to be an RMA.
Activities involved in the repair would be changed against a contract via
Tickets. So use of Returns with a direct association between the Ticket and the
Return seems to be most in line with SLX.
In your experience, could a possible/simpler association be
achieved by adding a new field to the Ticket Detail form which could target
existing Returns, and adding a field to the Return Detail which could target multiple
Tickets instead of changing the usage of Defects? Unfortunately this mod would
not answer any of my lesser issues listed above.
If I’m heading in the wrong direction, perhaps you can
address the above concerns.
Thank you for your expertise on this one!
PS: What happened to the cool skydiving Avatar?