Establishing the root cause

When performing a root cause analysis, try to establish the problem's root cause. For example, even if your organization's capacity management system triggered the problem investigation, you must determine why the service infrastructure is running out of capacity.

After you determine the root cause, take the following steps:

• Record the root cause
• If the root cause resides within a CI, relate the CI to the problem investigation. For information about how to do this, see Relating-incident-requests-to-other-record-types.
• Look at the Workaround field to review any previously proposed workarounds. With the root cause now known, if necessary, propose a better workaround and describe how to implement it. See Proposing-a-workaround-or-solution.

If you cannot determine the root cause, record this in a work information note on the Work Detail tab. Record why a root cause cannot be found, and record the activities that you performed to determine that a root cause cannot be determined.

If the root cause analysis is temporarily unable to progress (for example, if you are waiting for information from a supplier), set the problem investigation's Status field to Pending, and then specify why in a work information note on the Work Detail tab. See Managing-work-information-entries for information about how to do this.

To record the root cause

1. Open the relevant problem investigation as described in Creating-a-problem-investigation.
2. Add a Work Detail note describing the root cause. 
   For information about how to do this, see Managing-work-information-entries.
3. If a recent change is the root cause, and if BMC Helix ITSM: Change Management is installed on your system, relate the investigation to the change request with a Request Type of Infrastructure Change.
   For information about how to relate records, see Relating-incident-requests-to-other-record-types.
4. If a known error is the root cause, relate the investigation to the known error with a Request Type of Known Error.
   For more information, see Relating-incident-requests-to-other-record-types.
   After you record the root cause, you can complete the problem investigation as a known error, as described in Creating-and-reviewing-known-errors.

To create a knowledge article from a BMC Helix ITSM: Service Desk record

If BMC Helix ITSM: Knowledge Management is installed in your environment, you can create knowledge articles to describe the result of your root cause analysis. This information could be useful to subsequent users who encounter or analyze the same or similar issues and problems. 

To create a knowledge article, you must have Knowledge Submitter, Knowledge User, or Knowledge Admin permission. For more information about these BMC Helix ITSM: Knowledge Management permissions, see Roles and permissions. In addition, the Assignment availability option in your People record must be set to Yes.

1. Open the BMC Helix ITSM: Service Desk record for which you want to create a knowledge article.
2. Click Functions > Create Knowledge to create a new knowledge article.
3. In the Create Knowledge dialog box, select the required template from the list, and click Create. 
   For more information, see Knowledge article templates.

4. In the Content tab of the Knowledge article page, enter the appropriate information in the rich text fields.

   Type directly into a field, or click the edit icon at the top-right corner of the field to view the rich text editor with expanded functionality. Some fields have an internal editing toolbar, which you can open by double-clicking inside the text box.
   You can use the View HTML Source option to toggle between entering rich text and HTML code in the text boxes. The following limitations apply to the HTML authoring feature:

   • The HTML editor appears as a dialog box when you select the rich text field that you want to edit. If you click outside the work area on the knowledge article console, the dialog box closes. To access the HTML editor again, select a different rich text field before returning to the one that you want to edit. This also applies if you click the Close button in the dialog box.
   • If you launched the HTML editor dialog box by clicking the button at the top-right corner of a text field, the rich text editor dialog box opens when you close the HTML editor dialog box.
5. Assign the article to a user.
   For more information, see Assigning a knowledge article.

6. Assign the article to a visibility group.

   For more information, see How knowledge articles are found.
   If you do not specify a visibility group, the article will be visible only to the Author, the Assignee, and other members of the support group that the Assignee belongs to.

7. Click the Details tab, and enter the necessary information to add metadata to the article. 
8. (Optional) Click Preview to see what the knowledge article will look like when it is published.

9. (Optional) Add the article to your watch list, if you want to monitor it.

   For more information about watch lists, see Monitoring the knowledge article changes.

10. (Optional) To promote the knowledge article's status, on the Status Flow Bar, click the menu in the highlighted In Progress segment, and select Draft.

11. Click Save.

    After creating a knowledge article from an Incident, Problem, or Known Error record, you can click Use or Relate to form a relationship with the article. If you entered values in the Resolution Categorization tab of a knowledge article that you create from an incident, the same values are copied to the incident if you click Use.