Today we use the Description field on Areas and Categories in Service Desk to assist users with selecting the correct one. We also leverage folders to organize areas into sub-areas such as "Area.Sub-Area". The problem we have is we only want "Area.Sub-Area" to be a valid area for our tickets, we don't want the users to be able to select "Area". We can accomplish this if we remove the Description from "Area"; however we found there is significant value in having a Description so that is not an option. To enforce what we actually want we have a custom field "IsTopLevel" and use it's value on status transitions. If the area in the ticket is a top-level area then we will not allow the analyst to close the ticket, they must change it to "Area.Sub-Area" first. We also send a notification to the user if they select "Area" to remind them to please select "Area.Sub-Area" in the future.
As an example consider the following areas:
Access Request - expand this area for all access requests and select the option that best matches your need
Access Request.New - I need to request new access to an application or service
Access Request.Change - I need my existing access for an application or service changed
Access Request.Remove - I need to have access removed for an application or service
In this example "Access Request" is top-level and should not be allowed as an area on the ticket because it doesn't provide us with the detail we want for reporting. If an analyst receives a ticket with "Access Request" as the area, they must change it to one of the sub-areas before they are allowed to close it. It would be so much easier to administer and remove the burden from the analyst if we could simply have an Area with a Description and not allow the user to select it when they are submitting a ticket. Does anyone know if this is possible?