Make Linked Records Clickable

[dschipfel]

Current situation

Many modules allow records to be linked together, such as:

• Tickets
• Problems
• Tasks
• Changes
• Assets
• Contracts
• Knowledge Articles

These relationships are displayed correctly within the respective record. However, the linked items are currently shown as plain text and cannot be opened directly.

Suggested improvement

Make linked records clickable so users can navigate directly to the related item with a single click.

Examples:

• Ticket → Linked Problem
• Problem → Related Ticket
• Task → Related Ticket
• Asset → Related Ticket
• Contract → Related Asset
• Knowledge Article → Related Ticket

Clicking the linked item should open the corresponding record directly.

Benefits

• Faster navigation between related records
• Reduced number of clicks
• Improved user experience
• Easier investigation and troubleshooting
• Better overview of relationships between records
• More efficient day-to-day work

When users see a linked record, the next logical action is often to open it and review its details. Making these relationships clickable would create a much smoother workflow and improve navigation across all FreeITSM modules.

Example

Current:

Related Ticket: #1234
Related Problem: #56
Related Asset: Lenovo ThinkPad P16

Suggested:

Related Ticket: #1234 (clickable)
Related Problem: #56 (clickable)
Related Asset: Lenovo ThinkPad P16 (clickable)

This would make linked records far more useful and help users move through related information much more efficiently.

[edmozley]

Title: Previewing a linked record without leaving the page

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This comes out of @dschipfel's #91, and it is an idea rather than a plan - I would like your view on it before anything gets built.

The bit #91 got me thinking about

Making linked records clickable is clearly right, and it is being done. But while going through every module to find the places that needed it, something else became obvious: most of the time you do not actually want to go to the linked record. You want to know one thing about it.

You are working a ticket and it has a task attached. Is that task finished? Who has it? That is the whole question. Clicking through means either losing your place or collecting another browser tab, and after an hour of investigation you have fifteen of them and no idea which is which.

The idea

Alongside clicking a linked record to open it, you could preview it in place: a small panel showing what the thing is, its status, who has it, and a couple of the fields that matter, with an Open button if it turns out you do want the full record after all.

Nothing new to learn, and nothing lost - clicking still does exactly what #91 asked for.

How you would get to it

We are minded to put it on a small visible marker on the link itself, with right-click as a shortcut for anyone who prefers that. Right-click alone was tempting, but it is invisible unless somebody tells you it is there, and it does not exist on a tablet.

What a preview would show

Different for each kind of record, but along these lines:

Record	At a glance
Ticket	number, subject, status, priority, who it is with, requester
Task	title, status, assignee, due date, subtask progress
Change	title, status, risk, planned window
Problem	number, title, status, how many tickets are attached
Asset	tag, make and model, serial, who holds it, warranty
Contract	number, supplier, renewal date
Knowledge article	title, and the opening lines

What we would like to know from you

1. Is this actually useful to you, or is opening the record in a new tab good enough? An honest "I would never use it" is a genuinely helpful answer and would save the effort.
2. Which links would you want it on most? Everywhere is possible but not necessarily sensible, and starting with the two or three that come up daily would be better than a thin version of all of them.
3. What would you want to see in a preview? The table above is a guess. If the thing you always need is missing from it, the feature is not worth much.
4. Should a preview let you change anything - tick off a task, reassign it - or is it strictly a look? Read-only is simpler and safer; editable saves a trip.

While we are here

Your #91 has already earned its keep beyond the obvious. Going through the modules turned up two links that already existed and silently did not work - they opened the right module and then just sat there, because they were passing the wrong parameter. Neither had been reported, which figures: a link that goes somewhere plausible and does nothing looks like your own mistake, not the software's. Both are fixed.

That is also why this is worth doing properly rather than quickly: the underlying job is to have one place in the codebase that knows how to reach a given record, rather than each module inventing its own.

[edmozley]

Separately from the preview idea above - the thing you actually asked for is done.

A task showing the ticket or change it belongs to used to display them as plain text. Both are now links. That was the clearest case; the sweep found the other modules were mostly already doing it (problems, changes, contracts, assets, CMDB and the portal all link their related records correctly).

What the sweep turned up was more interesting than the missing links, though.

FreeITSM knew how to reach a record in three different places, and they disagreed

There was one map inside the notification bell, another behind the ⌘K search, and then hand-written links dotted through the individual screens. Change Management alone was being linked to by four different address styles depending on which screen you started from.

Most of that worked, but only because the modules were being forgiving about it. Two of them are not forgiving, and both of the broken links happened to point at exactly those two:

• a task attached to a ticket
• an approved catalogue request in Forms

Both opened the right module and then simply sat there. That is why neither had ever been reported, by you or anyone else: a link that goes somewhere plausible and does nothing looks like your own mistake, not the software's. Both are fixed.

There is now one place that knows where every kind of record lives, so a fifth address style cannot quietly appear the next time something gets linked to.

One I have left alone for now

The AI-suggested problem clusters list ticket numbers, and those are still plain text. They are a special case: the numbers come from the model rather than from the database, so making them clickable means looking each one up first - which would also quietly check whether the model made them up. Worth doing, but a bigger job than the rest and I did not want to bundle it in.

Thanks for this one. It looked like a small tidy-up and turned out to be a genuine fault two levels down.

[dschipfel]

Yes, we would actually use such a preview.

The most useful relationships for us would be:

• Ticket <-> Task
• Ticket <-> Asset
• Problem <-> Ticket
• Change <-> Ticket
• Contract <-> Asset

Most of the time we only need to quickly check information without leaving the current record. Opening additional tabs works, but for daily work a preview would be faster and more convenient.

Regarding the information shown in the preview

The fields you suggested look exactly right to us. They cover the information we would typically want to check before deciding whether we need to open the full record.

Read-only vs editable

We would prefer the preview to be read-only.

The main goal of the preview is to quickly understand the linked record without navigating away. Allowing edits from the preview would add complexity and could increase the risk of accidental changes. If we need to modify something, opening the full record is perfectly fine.

Additional suggestion

A small information badge/icon next to the linked record would be very helpful.

• Clicking the badge could open the preview panel.
• Hovering over the badge could also show the preview on desktop devices.
• Using a clickable badge ensures the feature is also fully usable on tablets and touch devices, where hover interactions do not exist.

This would make the functionality more discoverable than a right-click action while still keeping the normal link behavior intact.

Overall, we think this would be a valuable usability improvement and would significantly reduce navigation effort when working with related records throughout the day.