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Ticket Conflicts

Ticket conflicts help teams find work that appears to describe the same execution need. TOW compares ticket titles, descriptions, labels, and semantic similarity to identify likely duplicates, then presents the recommended ticket to keep and the recommended ticket to archive.

Conflict detection is a review aid. It does not replace human judgment. Always compare the tickets before resolving the conflict.

When Conflicts Appear​

Conflicts can appear in three ways:

  • During ticket creation, when a similar active ticket already exists.
  • From a manual conflict scan in the Tickets page.
  • From a scheduled background scan, if your workspace has nightly ticket conflict scanning enabled.

Manual scans may return immediately or queue an Agent Run. If a scan is queued, results appear after the background run finishes.

Read a Conflict​

A conflict shows:

  • The recommended ticket to keep.
  • The recommended ticket to archive.
  • A confidence score.
  • Similarity details, such as title similarity or semantic similarity.
  • Reasons for the recommendation.
  • Distinguishing factors when the verifier found important differences.

Review the title, description, status, assignee, due date, parent, comments, and links on both tickets. A high match score means the tickets are similar; it does not mean they have the same owner, commitment, or customer impact.

Resolve a Conflict​

When a conflict is ready to resolve, choose which ticket should stay active. TOW archives the other ticket and leaves activity so the team can see what happened.

Use the recommended keep ticket when:

  • It has the clearer title and description.
  • It has the correct owner or due date.
  • It has richer comments or links.
  • It is already referenced from roadmap, docs, or chat.
  • It represents the broader or more current version of the work.

Choose the other ticket when the recommendation is wrong but the pair is still a duplicate.

Duplicate Resolution Archives Work

Resolving a duplicate conflict archives the ticket you do not keep. It does not delete the ticket. Archive preserves history, references, comments, links, and activity so reviewers can still understand the duplicate later.

Reject a Conflict​

Reject a conflict when the tickets are similar but both should remain active. Common examples include similar work for different customers, phased work that needs separate tracking, or two tickets that share language but have different acceptance criteria.

Rejecting a conflict removes it from the current review flow and keeps both tickets active.

Scanning by Project​

Project scope controls conflict scanning. In All Projects, TOW reviews accessible work across projects. In a selected project, TOW reviews that project's work.

Use project-scoped scans when teams use similar language across separate projects and you want to reduce false positives.

Good Conflict Hygiene​

To reduce unnecessary conflicts:

  • Use specific titles that name the outcome.
  • Put customer, product area, and milestone context in structured fields.
  • Link related work instead of creating duplicate tickets.
  • Use epics for grouped work and subtasks for small execution steps.
  • Archive canceled or superseded tickets instead of leaving them active.

When a duplicate is real, resolve it promptly. Duplicate active tickets make ownership, roadmap progress, and reporting harder to trust.