Record Previews

Record Previews

Linked records across FreeITSM carry a small ⓘ. Click it and a card opens on the spot showing the handful of facts you actually wanted, without leaving the page you are on.

It exists to answer one question: is this link the one I meant? Before, the only way to find out was to open the record — which meant losing your place, or opening a tab you would forget to close, and doing it again for the next link.

Requested by dschipfel in discussion #91.

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Where you will find it

The ⓘ sits beside a linked record wherever one is shown:

Where you are	What you can preview
A ticket's Links bar	the linked tasks, equipment, problems, changes and other tickets
A task's Links section	the ticket and the change it is attached to
A problem's linked incidents	each incident, and the linked change
A change's linked incidents	each incident
A contract's equipment list	each piece of equipment
An asset's Contracts and Tickets tabs	each contract, and each ticket raised against it

What each card shows

Record	Fields
Ticket	number and subject, status, priority, who it is with, who raised it
Task	title, status, assignee, due date, subtask progress
Change	title, status, risk, planned window
Problem	number and title, status, how many tickets are attached
Asset	name, tag, type, make and model, serial, who holds it, warranty expiry
Contract	number and title, status, supplier, renewal date, notice date
Knowledge article	title and its opening lines

Empty fields are left out rather than shown blank. A sparse record gives a short card, not a column of dashes — the point is to be read at a glance, and six labels with nothing beside them is worse than three with something.

Using it

• Click the ⓘ to open the card. Click it again, click anywhere else, or press Escape to close it.
• It works from the keyboard: tab to the ⓘ and press Enter or Space.
• Open at the foot of the card takes you to the record itself, in a new tab.
• On a phone the card comes up from the bottom of the screen rather than floating beside the badge, because there is nowhere sensible to put a floating card on a narrow screen.
• Scrolling closes it. The card is positioned against the badge, so it does not follow the page.

It is read-only, deliberately

You cannot edit a record from its preview. This was dschipfel's own request when the feature was designed — "allowing edits from the preview would add complexity and could increase the risk of accidental changes" — and it is right. A preview is something you open in passing, often several in a row while scanning a list. Making it editable turns every glance into an opportunity to change the wrong record.

"That record cannot be shown here"

This is the honest answer, not a fault. It means one of:

• the record is in a company you do not have access to;
• you do not have access to that module at all;
• the record has been deleted.

FreeITSM deliberately gives the same answer to all three. If a missing record and a forbidden one looked different, anyone could confirm that a record exists simply by watching which message came back — which is exactly the fact the access check exists to withhold.

So if you see it, the question to ask is "should I have access to this?", not "is the preview broken?".

Why a badge and not a hover

Hovering is invisible until you happen to do it, and does not exist on a tablet or a phone at all. A right-click menu has the same two problems. dschipfel asked for a visible badge for exactly this reason, and it is a proper button — clickable, focusable and reachable from the keyboard.

What it does not do

• It does not show everything about a record. It shows enough to identify one. Open the record for the rest.
• It does not tell you why two records are linked. The relationship is described where the link lives — a pill labelled "Duplicate of", a task's checkbox — not on the card.
• It does not refresh while open. Close and reopen it after changing something.

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See also

• Tickets — the Links bar, where most previews live
• Tasks — a task's links, and the one-ticket rule
• Linking Equipment to Contracts
• Linking Equipment to Tickets
• Problem Management · Change Management
• Record Previews Developer Guide — adding a type, wiring a badge, extending a card