How can I make a contact the case manager of several cases with the same client contact?

Question

Our organization is trying to use CiviCase as a ticketing system. So we have one case type, the "Ticket".

We can have multiple Tickets open for the same client. However, I can't assign the same contact as a "Case Manager" for multiple tickets to the same client.

So let's say client A has 2 open Tickets. On the first Ticket, I assign myself as the Case Manager. That works as expected. However, when I try to assign myself as the Case Manager of the second Ticket for client A, I get an error:

The relationship type definition for the case role is not valid for the client and / or staff contact types.

If I create 2 cases to the same client, I am automatically assigned as a Case Manager to both of those cases. However, if I remove myself as Case Manager, and try to re-add myself, I get the same error as above.

How can I assign myself (or anybody else) as the Case Manager of multiple cases to the same client.

Answer 1

So, I know it's against best practices, but after digging into the code a bit, I've located a (hacky) solution to my problem. When adding a Case Manager via a case view, CRM_Contact_BAO_Relationship::legacyCreateMultiple is executed.

At line 194 there's a check for duplicate relationships. If I comment out the "continue" at line 203 within the dupe check, I can successfully assign the case manager to the case.

I would much rather not have to do a core edit, so I await a better solution.

Edit: I had run into a problem elsewhere that ended up being caused by my hack. I do not recommend implementing my hack as I'm not sure of the implications.