Problem
Overview
A problem is an unknown cause of one or more actual or potential incidents. Problems are often first identified by the occurrence of several incidents with similar symptoms.
Problem can be manually created from the Service Desk → Problems → Add Problem action:
General
- Summary: Brief description of the ticket.
- Category: Category for organizing your problems.
- SLA: Link to a Service Level Agreement. The predefined reaction and solution times depend on this. The selection list is filtered automatically so that you can select only those Service Level Agreements that result from the combination of entries in the User, Asset, Service, and Priority fields.
- Show All: Select this option to turn off the automatic filter that is used for selection of SLA/OLA/UC.
- Get SLA: Automatically select the Service Level Agreement/Operation Level Agreement or Underpinning Contract with the most critical solution times. The selected agreement should correspond to the combination of the entries in the User, Asset, Service, and Priority fields.
- Inform responsible roles or users via email: By default, members of roles that are responsible for a ticket are notified by email when work starts on it. You can turn off this option here.
- Impact: Select a group (User, Workgroup, or Company) which is affected by this problem. If a related asset or service has a higher business impact, then this higher business impact will be applied automatically when the ticket is saved.
- Urgency: Urgency level for the solution of this problem.
- User: Person (initiator or concerned person) for whom this problemt is created.
- Entry By: Select how this problem was reported, from Incident, by User, E-mail, or Event Trigger. This data is purely informative and is not processed by the system.
- E-mail on Status Change: Case for which the responsible person should be notified by email.
- Resubmission: Date on which the person or responsible role receives an email reminder about the ticket. The email contains a link by which the ticket can be accessed.
- Required Skills: skills required to complete the task.
- Description: Detailed description of the problem. As long as the problem has the New status, opening of the ticket points to this tabulator.
- Journal/Activities: In the journal, all actions that were made for the ticket, will be automatically recorded. This also includes mails that were received for this ticket or sent out of the ticket. Under My Activities, you can enter your own activities for the ticket. Click Add to record the activity in the journal. Until the problem is not in the New or Closed status, opening of the ticket points directly to this tabulator.
- Solution: Description of the solution that was entered when the problem was closed. When the problem gets the Closed status, opening of the ticket points directly to this tabulator. The solution cannot be directly edited.
Attachments
- For this problem, copies of digital documents can be saved and later reopened.
Time Tracking
- List of all recorded jobs for this problem.
Tickets
On the Tickets dialog pages, you can manage all the tickets that are related to the problem.
Assets
On the Assets dialog pages, you can manage all the assets that are related to the problem.
- Assets: Additional assets that are affected by this ticket. For example, if a customer reports an incident that is related to a computer and you know that other computers of the same model are affected, insert this here. This data is purely informative and is not processed by the system.
Services
On the Services dialog pages, you can manage all the services that are related to the problem.
- Services: Additional services that are affected by this ticket. For example, if a customer reports an incident that is related to their services, and you know that other services are affected by this, insert this here. This data is purely informative and is not processed by the system.
Users
On the Users dialog pages, you can manage all users that are related to the problem.
- Users: Other users that are affected by the ticket. Select the Inform related users about status change to notify by email other users that are listed here about the status changes of this ticket.
Tasks
On the Tasks dialog pages, you can manage all the tasks that are related to the problem.
- Tasks: Create tasks and assign them to employees connected with this ticket. If you select the Close this problem when the last task is closed checkbox, this ticket is closed when the status of the last task on the list is set to Closed. The solution is copied from the task to the ticket.
Actions
- Edit: opens an edit dialog for the Problem
- Accept: A new Problem is always assigned to a role, not to a specific person. With this action, a role member says that they take over this Problem, which means that they accept responsibility for the Problem. The Problem status is set to Assigned. This informs other members of this role that somebody is already working on this Problem.
- Mark as Read: the problem is no longer shown in bold in the grid and is not taken into account when calculating the number for navigation item badge. When applied, instead of this action the Mark as Unread action appears.
- Mark as Unread: Mark the task as unread (shown in bold on the grid) and, if configured, the unread task will be taken into account in the navigation item badge. See also Track activities with new information received page.
- Take Over: A new Problem is always assigned to a role, not to a specific person. With this action, a role member says that they take over this Problem, which means that they accept responsibility for the Problem. The Problem status is set to In Progress. This informs other members of this role that somebody is already working on this Problem.
- Forward: Forward the Problem to a role or a user.
- Send E-mail: Send an email to any user, business contact, business partner, role, or email address to request further information or to distribute any information about the Problem. The User field of the incident will be pre-filled automatically as the "TO…" recipient.
- Pause: Set the status to Paused by using a wizard. The reminder date is calculated automatically based on the value in the Default span for pausing tickets (days) field of the Service Desk settings. If the ticket status does not change by the set date, a reminder email is automatically sent to the person who is responsible for the ticket. The reason and the description are saved in the journal. See also, Pausing a problem.
- Merge: If two or more tickets have been created for a single problem, you can close or pause all duplicates. The journal entries and attachments of the merged tickets can be copied to the remaining Problem. The Problem then continues to run on one ticket. The customer is informed by email that the reported Problem was merged into one ticket.
- Return to Role: The Accept action is reset, the entry under Responsible is deleted, and the status is set to Assigned. If the status was previously On Hold, then this is not changed.
- Create Task: Create a task from the Problem. The information from the Problem is copied to the Task. The Problem is retained and linked to the Task.
- Delete: Delete the Problem.
- Close: Finish the processing of the ticket by specifying the Solution manually or copying it from the KB article, optionally choose the attachments, and set the status to Closed.
- History: opens a History Wizard.
- Flag / Unflag as Known Error: run the action and add a comment. The note and the comment that the Problem is flagged or unflagged as a Known Error is added to the Journal.
- Track Working Time: Start tracking the working time that was spent on this ticket.
- Export: allows selecting the format and exporting the Problem-related data.
- Create an announcement from the Problem: The information from the Problem is copied to the announcement. The Problem is retained and linked to the announcement. See also, Announcements
- Create Change: Create a change from this Problem. The information from the Problem is automatically copied to the change. The Problem is retained and linked to the change. When the change is closed, the Problem is closed, too.
- Create KB Article: Create a knowledge base article from the Problem. The information from the Problem is automatically copied to the knowledge base article. The Problem is retained and linked to the knowledge base article.
- Search Problems: Search for problems that match this ticket. If you open the search dialog within the context of a problem and this problem was linked with an asset or a service, the respective filters are pre-filled automatically. Based on the search result, you can link individual tickets with the problem.
- Search in Knowledge Base: Search for knowledgebase articles that match this Problem.
Archiving Problems
To improve the system performance, all the Problems that were Closed more than 2 years ago are automatically archived and can be accessed by activating the Archived toggle on the Problems dataset view. The default archiving rule can be changed by the Administrator by adjusting archiving in the Problem Configuration Item. See also, Archiving outdated incidents.