Performing probable cause analysis

As an operator, you can perform the following tasks:

View service details
Perform probable cause analysis
Perform event actions for an impacted service
View CI topology
View service hierarchy
View the top metrics from causal nodes
Perform event actions

To view the details of a service

In the BMC Helix AIOps, do one of the following actions to view the service details page:

Click the Overview tab, and from the Services widget, click any of the impacted services whose details you want to view.
Click the Services tab and click an individual service heat map or tile.
The following MP4 shows how to view the service details page, the impacted event details, the event actions available for any event, and how to cross-launch the event details page in BMC Helix Operations Management.
You can view the following details of each service:

No.	Description
1	Displays the service name, severity, service impact score in percentage, service health score, and the date and time when the service was last updated. If a dependent service (sub-service) is impacted, then the health score is propagated to all services that the impacted service depends upon. In such scenario, since there are no events for the parent service, the Service Hierarchy tab is displayed, which shows the impacted service in the hierarchy.
2	Displays the top 3 impacted entities (business services) that are associated with the service. If a sub-service is impacted, top 3 impacted sub-services are listed.
3	Pie chart displaying the count of open events impacting the service. The events are categorized by event status. The pie chart does not consider the INFO and OK events while displaying the event count. You can click the pie chart to view the list of all impacting events, Situations, changes, and incidents for the service. Currently, only 10000 events are displayed for any service. From the Event Details page, click More Details to cross-launch into BMC Helix Operations Management and view all the associated event details. If a sub-service is impacted, shows the total count of impacted sub-service. For propagated impact, only the count is displayed and there is no link for additional information.
4	Displays a timeline for the service health over a selected time range. It also shows the health score for the selected time range. You can hover over a time slot to view the health score. The health timeline does not display the INFO and OK events. For more information, see Service-health-score-impact-score-and-metrics. Legends to indicate incidents, events, and change requests are displayed on the health timeline. Hover over an event, incident, or change request to view the details. For more information, see Total-incident-count-and-mean-time-to-resolve-MTTR-indicators-for-a-reliable-incidence-response-process.

To view the probable causes of an impacted service

In the BMC Helix AIOps, do one of the following to view the probable causes of an impacted service:
- Click the Overview tab, and from the Services widget, click any of the impacted services whose details you want to view.
- Click the Services tab, click an individual service tile.
  Service details page appears.
Navigate to the Probable Cause tab.
From the Causal Nodes (% Probability), select a causal node to view the top causal events and changes for that node.
(Optional) To customize the columns that appear here, click the column selector and clear the columns that you do not want to appear.
Only selected columns are displayed. You can also drag and drop the columns to rearrange them based on your requirement.
Do one of the following to view the event or change request details:
- To view the events and event details:
  1. Click Events to view top causal events.
  2. Hover over the score to view the score calculation details for the event.
  3. Click on an event message link to view event details.
  4. Click More Details to launch the event details page in BMC Helix Operations Management.
    Performance View tab for event details
    The Performance View tab displays only for an alarm class event. It contains the time-series data collected from key attributes of the causal events.
    The graph shows the display name of the impacted metric or attribute along with the unit of measurement for that metric.
  5. Click to perform any of the supported event actions.
    All logs and notes for an event are displayed.
  6. Enter a note in the text box and click Add Note to add any additional notes related to the event.
    Any note added for the event is reflected for the event in BMC Helix Operations Management.
- To view the change details:
  - Select Changes to view top three change requests.
  - Hover-over the score to view the score calculation.
  - Click on a change to view change details.
    View all events or all changes
    Click Show all events or Show all changes link to view all events or all changes for a particular causal node.
    You can switch back to view only the top events or top changes, by clicking the Show top causal events or Show top causal changes link.
In the Incident ID column, if an incident is created, click the link to view the incident details in BMC Helix IT Service Management – SmartIT.
To launch the incident details page, you must have the permissions to view incidents in BMC Helix IT Service Management.
Click Action and perform any of the available actions for the open events.
To perform actions, see To perform event actions for an impacted service.

To perform event actions for an impacted service

The capabilities available for your organization and your user role determine the event actions that you can perform against the open events. The following table describes the basic event actions.

Action	Description
Acknowledge Event	Recognizes the existence of an open event. This operation changes the event status from Open to Acknowledged.
Assign Event	Assigns ownership of an open, acknowledged, or assigned event to yourself or another person in the same account. This operation changes the event status from Open or Acknowledged to Assigned, and the event owner is updated with the selected user. If the event status is Assigned, only the ownership changes to the selected user.
Close Event	Disables any further event operations on the event. Closed events are not considered for calculating the status of a device. You can close events with statuses Open, Assigned, and Acknowledged only.
Decline Ownership	Removes ownership of an event in the assigned state. This operation changes the event status to Acknowledged.
Set Event Priority	Assigns a priority level to the event.
Take Ownership	Assigns ownership of Open or Acknowledged event to yourself.
Unknowledge Event	Changes a previously Acknowledged event back to the Open state.
Add Notes	Displays the Add Notes dialog box.
Create Incident	Creates an incident in BMC Helix IT Service Management – SmartIT. The incident ID appears against the impacted nodes. You can click the link to to view the incident details in BMC Helix IT Service Management(Must have the required permissions to view incidents).

For more information about the impact of the actions on the event, see Performing-event-operations in the BMC Helix Operations Management online documentation.

To view the topological map of the service CIs

Click CI Topology to view the topological map of the service CIs and view the node details.
CI node display color
The CI topology nodes are displayed as per the node impact severity status and the CI impact path between the impacted nodes is marked with dotted red lines, and the non-impacted nodes is marked with grey lines as shown in this image.
- (Optional) Use the various display options to maximize/minimize, drag or position, zoom in/out, and fit to center the topology map.
- From the map, select any node to view the node details.
- (Optional) Change the topology hierarchy, enable or disable aggregation by CI Kind.
- (Optional) Modify the advanced filter to control the view of topology map.
  Based on the length of the selected criteria and available space to display, the filters are automatically tagged and grouped as +1 active, +2 active, and so on. You can click the tagged number to view the additional filters.
- (Optional) In the topological map, 10 or more CIs of same kind are automatically grouped together. You need to expand the groups one after another to view the CIs. As example, consider a set of 15 CIs of same kind that are grouped together. After expanding the group, you can view 9 CIs and another group, which you need to expand again to view the remaining 6 CIs.

To view service hierarchy

Click Service Hierarchy to view the service node details of parent and child services.
Click Upstream Hierarchy or Downstream Hierarchy, or both to view the upstream (parent nodes) or downstream (child nodes) service hierarchy of the current service.

To view health indicators

Click Health Indicators to view the health indicators configured for the service. By default, the charts are displayed for the last 24 hours. You have options to view the health indicators for the last 3, 6, 12, or 24 hours. For more information, see Health Indicators and Adding or editing health indicators for a service.

To view metrics for an impacted service

Click Metrics to view the metrics chart for the top attributes of the causal node. If there are more than three metrics, only the top three trending metrics are displayed.
Based on the metric data and its trend, you can take action to resolve the issue. For more information, see Service-health-score-impact-score-and-metrics.