Proactive Problem Management

The Proactive problem management workspace is a purpose-built console to support problem coordinators in end-to-end activity to identify valuable problem investigations. To access this workspace, click More > Workspaces > Proactive problem management in Smart IT. 

The following video illustrates how you can use the Proactive problem management workspace in BMC Helix ITSM Insights.

Proactive problem management dashboard

If your organization has a license of BMC Helix ITSM Insights, as a problem coordinator, you can access the Proactive problem management workspace from Smart IT. This workspace enables you to run analytics on incident data and leverage AI clustering technology to identify patterns of recurring incidents.

The Proactive problem management dashboard displays recurrent incidents as clusters in the form of a heat map and a list. You can also view filters, list of jobs available, and a list of presets. You can download the heat map or the list view as a CSV or PDF file. 

When you log in for the first time, you must create a one-time or recurrent job in the Proactive problem management settings page to view incident clusters in the dashboard.

Permissions

To be able to access Proactive problem management, you must have the Problem Master, Problem User, or Problem Submitter permission. 

Visual impact of incident clusters in Heat Map

The Heat Map tab is selected by default and displays clusters on the basis of the job configured. The tiles in the heat map display the cluster name, number of incidents in that cluster, and the number of problem investigations related to the incidents in the cluster.

A heat map visualization displays a tile of colored rectangles, with each rectangle representing a cluster. Heat map is a graphical way to allow users to quickly grasp the impact of variables. By observing how cell colors and size change across the heat map, you can observe if there are any patterns in value for one or both variables.

To select the metric that determines the size of each rectangle, click Size by and select one of the following options:

• Number of incidents
• Total resolution time: The total resolution time displays the total time taken from ticket submission to ticket resolution. This is calculated by getting the resolution time for each ticket and adding them all up.
• Total effort: Displays the total average effort and is calculated if you are using the effort log data that is present in the Total Effort field. 
  This value is either tracked manually or calculated automatically for all incidents in a cluster. If you are not tracking the total effort or if this field has zero value for all clusters, then this option is not displayed in the list.

To customize the number of clusters in the heat map, in the Max clusters shown field, specify how many clusters you want to view in the heat map. You can specify any value between 5 and 50. To view the clusters and its pertinent information on the heat map, the maximum number of clusters is limited to 50.

You can configure the default number of clusters in the heat map from the settings menu. To learn more, see Configuring additional stop words, number of jobs, and default number of clusters. 

To select the variable that determines the color of each rectangle, click Color by and select one of the following options:

• Average priority: Average priority is calculated by adding the priority values and dividing by the total number of tickets in the cluster. The numeric value is then categorized as Critical, High, Medium, and Low. 
• Trend: This option displays the average daily trend per cluster, that is, the average percentage daily increase or decrease in number of incidents created within a cluster. A positive trend (0 to 100%) is shown in red, and a negative trend is shown in blue. 

When you click on a cluster, the drill-down view for the cluster is displayed.

From a cluster, you have the option to seamlessly create problem investigation or view cluster details.

List view of incident cluster details

The List view displays the incident clusters in a tabular format. The view displays incident clusters, number of incidents, trend, total effort, total resolution time, average priority, level 1 grouping (if level 1 is not machine learning in the job configuration), and level 2 grouping (if selected in job configuration), and the number of problem investigations related to the incidents in the cluster.

To refresh the clusters in this view, use the  icon

Incident analysis within clusters

When you click on a cluster, the drill-down view for the cluster is displayed.

You can select an incident cluster, and then create a problem investigation or relate to an existing problem investigation.