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Changes on how categories are set in FreshService have a negative impact

  • 10 August 2023
  • 9 replies
  • 235 views
sccit
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A change has been made on the way the categories can be set in FreshService that have a negative impact and do not help improving efficiency. It is the opposite instead.

 

Before it was extremely easy to do in bulk using plane text, as you could define the hierarchy using indentations. This allowed for easy management and to keep track of changes by saving a copy of all of them before major changes were made.

 

Now that is not possible to achieve and if one wants to create a copy (or a backup) of the categories before a major change, one would need to copy them one by one, making it an extremely laborious and time consuming task.

 

The change is understandable as it may look nicer, and it allows to make some modifications in bulk, but only per level. But is not efficient in the practical sense.

 

Our recommendation would be leave both options available, the later and the new one. So one can use the one that is more convenient depending on the scenario.

 

Thanks.

9 replies

zachary.king
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Hello @sccit, I have not seen this change. We are still able to bulk update our categories. Can you share what you are seeing instead? Would hate to lose that functionality as well. Hopefully we can press it on the product team to not change how we add categories in Freshservice.

Thanks and take care.

- Zach / ITSM Solutions Engineer
sccit
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Hi Zachary, thanks for the shout out.

Sure, see some screenshots below. I blurred the text for obvious reasons.

They still give you the option to update in bulk BUT only per level. So not sure how that would work out. For me, it has made my work harder, which doesn’t seem to make much sense.

In this new view, you would need to click on the item from the level you want in order to be able to see the rest of the hierarchy items down the line. 

It may be worth to note that this change seems to have been applied after the new Workspaces feature was enabled on our instance.

I took 2 screenshots so it can be seen from top to bottom. You’d notice the old “easy-to-manage” text -based categories is nowhere to be found anymore:

 

 

 

Daniel Söderlund
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A change has been made on the way the categories can be set in FreshService that have a negative impact and do not help improving efficiency. It is the opposite instead.

 

Before it was extremely easy to do in bulk using plane text, as you could define the hierarchy using indentations. This allowed for easy management and to keep track of changes by saving a copy of all of them before major changes were made.

 

Now that is not possible to achieve and if one wants to create a copy (or a backup) of the categories before a major change, one would need to copy them one by one, making it an extremely laborious and time consuming task.

 

The change is understandable as it may look nicer, and it allows to make some modifications in bulk, but only per level. But is not efficient in the practical sense.

 

Our recommendation would be leave both options available, the later and the new one. So one can use the one that is more convenient depending on the scenario.

 

Thanks.

Ya, you can still do in some kind of bulk but it’s more cumbersome. I could have made this trade odd if the category converted to a indexed value. Meaning you can change the display name and all  tickets would change with it. As of the old system if you changed the category all tickets lost the value and you couldn’t restore it. What I have seen it’s still the case with the new way. 

Solution consultant @ synerity.eu, A new error is always a sign of progress!
sccit
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Userlevel 1
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A change has been made on the way the categories can be set in FreshService that have a negative impact and do not help improving efficiency. It is the opposite instead.

 

Before it was extremely easy to do in bulk using plane text, as you could define the hierarchy using indentations. This allowed for easy management and to keep track of changes by saving a copy of all of them before major changes were made.

 

Now that is not possible to achieve and if one wants to create a copy (or a backup) of the categories before a major change, one would need to copy them one by one, making it an extremely laborious and time consuming task.

 

The change is understandable as it may look nicer, and it allows to make some modifications in bulk, but only per level. But is not efficient in the practical sense.

 

Our recommendation would be leave both options available, the later and the new one. So one can use the one that is more convenient depending on the scenario.

 

Thanks.

Ya, you can still do in some kind of bulk but it’s more cumbersome. I could have made this trade odd if the category converted to a indexed value. Meaning you can change the display name and all  tickets would change with it. As of the old system if you changed the category all tickets lost the value and you couldn’t restore it. What I have seen it’s still the case with the new way. 

Thank you Daniel. I really don’t see a real benefit in the practical sense for having changes in categories reflected in old tickets. Perhaps is due to the way we work, so I don’t expect others having the same opinion.

In any case, it would be appreciated if this is considered as an honest and serious feedback and taken into consideration for implementation, as I failed to see meaningful value on your response, with all due respect. It sounded more like a dismissal. Thanks again.

Daniel Söderlund
Rank
Userlevel 7
Badge +13

A change has been made on the way the categories can be set in FreshService that have a negative impact and do not help improving efficiency. It is the opposite instead.

 

Before it was extremely easy to do in bulk using plane text, as you could define the hierarchy using indentations. This allowed for easy management and to keep track of changes by saving a copy of all of them before major changes were made.

 

Now that is not possible to achieve and if one wants to create a copy (or a backup) of the categories before a major change, one would need to copy them one by one, making it an extremely laborious and time consuming task.

 

The change is understandable as it may look nicer, and it allows to make some modifications in bulk, but only per level. But is not efficient in the practical sense.

 

Our recommendation would be leave both options available, the later and the new one. So one can use the one that is more convenient depending on the scenario.

 

Thanks.

Ya, you can still do in some kind of bulk but it’s more cumbersome. I could have made this trade odd if the category converted to a indexed value. Meaning you can change the display name and all  tickets would change with it. As of the old system if you changed the category all tickets lost the value and you couldn’t restore it. What I have seen it’s still the case with the new way. 

Thank you Daniel. I really don’t see a real benefit in the practical sense for having changes in categories reflected in old tickets. Perhaps is due to the way we work, so I don’t expect others having the same opinion.

In any case, it would be appreciated if this is considered as an honest and serious feedback and taken into consideration for implementation, as I failed to see meaningful value on your response, with all due respect. It sounded more like a dismissal. Thanks again.

Don’t get me wrong I agree with that the older system was better. Or as you say have the option for both. 

If you create filters/views based on category they will be useless for older tickets if the name of the category/subcategory/item name is changed. You can still see them in the old category in the analytics.  

 

 

 

Solution consultant @ synerity.eu, A new error is always a sign of progress!
B
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In my main FS I still have the OG text-based bulk Category editor but in my new FS where WS was enabled by default, it uses this new style.  Have to say that I was disappointed that the simplicity of the old text editor was removed.

CYDEF . ca (cyber security through threat hunting)
zachary.king
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Hello @sccit, Appreciate the screenshots, we have not been converted to Freshservice for Business teams yet but it is coming. So I really appreciate the heads up in this respect. Our team does do a review of our categories on a consistent basis, and it has been a fairly easy process with the ability to make changes in bulk.

- Zach / ITSM Solutions Engineer
J
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I came here to make the same comment.  This change has made managing categories far harder than it needs to be.

G
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I 100% agree with you, we had actually written some scripting to occasionally alphabetize all the of the categories, sub-categories and Items. Unfortunately, with this change we can no longer simply copy/paste the updated lists into the platform. I would be curious to find out what value they were attempting to add through this change. It seems there could be a possibility of adding a ‘bulk’ import that still respected the previous format, but I am not certain. 

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