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Retiring Queue Topics

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Level 10

I'm looking for ideas from the community on how to best retire queue topics without losing artifact data. We have queues with hundreds of topics that are constantly changing. In order to report on the demand by request type, we rely on the Queue Topic ID/Name field. The only way to deactivate a queue topic is to delete it. Doing so results in issues with a blank "Queue Topic ID". Since we rely on the Queue Topic Name/ID for reports, we don't want to lose the ability to report on this field.

One idea I had was to move them within the queue into a "DO NOT USE-ARCHIVED QUEUE TOPICS" topic group, which is clunky but works.

Another idea I have is to attach a custom form to all Issues that use the to-be-retired queue topic, allowing us to "tag" the issues with the queue topic details. This takes some work, and also makes reporting much more challenging.

It sure would be nice if we could hide/show queue topics, similar to options in a drop menu in the custom forms. Does anyone else have experience with this issue? Do you have any suggestions?

7 Replies

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Level 10

We just prefix it with the word “OBSOLETE”, like your “DO NOT USE”.

Inelegant but because there is no way to hide queue topics, what else can we do?

Thanks,

Eric

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Level 10
Hi, We're early in our implementation and haven't yet had the need to do this but I think being able to hide or archive them is a great idea. Have you submitted a feature request, Eric?

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Level 10
this is super clunky but if you don't want to wait for a new feature to be created to fix this, you can 1) create a queue with all your retired queue topic ID names. 2) move your related issues into that queue. 3) change all the queue topic IDs for those issues to those new names. 4) move the issues back to whichever project you got them from. this way you get to keep the queue topic field (with the new retired name in it) and you don't have a bunch of "do not use" fields in your current queue. -skye

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Level 5
I haven't done this yet, but I was mulling it over. You could possibly create a calculated field in a custom form that is hidden from everybody except whomever you want to know it exists. You could just paste the queue topic ID wildcard into that calculated field. Then, in theory, whatever your queue topic name is would be duplicated into the request/submission's custom form forever even though the actual queue topic gets deleted. May not work, but I've done this approach with other things.

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Level 4
Here is an IDea Exchange post on this; https://support.workfront.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/115000962988-An-ability-to-deactivate-Queue-T... 40 votes! almost there Andrew Beard - LeapPoint Senior Associate LeapPoint Herndon VA