This documentation supports the 20.02 version of Remedy Service Desk.To view an earlier version, select the version from the Product version menu.

Creating a solution database entry from an incident

From Problem Management, you can publish the resolution from an incident into the solution database.

For a description of the procedure to create a database entry, see To create a solution entry from an incident.

Best practice
"Search early and search often!" This Knowledge Centered Support (KCS) maxim means that before you create a knowledge base article, you should search the knowledge base to determine if there are already articles on the issue. It also means that you should conduct multiple searches using different criteria. This increases the likelihood that you will find a match. For complete information about searching for knowledge base articles, see Searching for knowledge articles.

Creating a knowledge base article when you create the incident request ensures a tighter integration between incident management and the knowledge base, which is important for good knowledge management. 

When you create the knowledge base article, it is important to capture the full context of the incident. This includes capturing technical information, such as hardware and software details, and non-technical information, such as what the customer thinks could be causing the incident and what impact the incident is having on them. 

We recommend that you use the following information categories when capturing technical information.

  • Incident — The situation (or question) in the customer's words; what are they trying to do or what is not working.
    It is important to capture the issue in the customer's words, because this is likely that the way that other customers view it the same of similar issues. If the customer's description is reworded or recategorized by technical staff subsequent to the incident request being recorded, it might not be found as a match when searching knowledge base articles the next time a similar issue arises.
  • Environment — What technology does the customer have? Was anything in the environment changed recently?
  • Resolution — The steps required to resolve the incident or answer the question.
  • Metadata — High level categorization of the article's content aids searchability, maintenance, reporting, and other processes related to the handling of the article.

Over time, the way that a person who reports an incident remembers and interprets non-technical information can change. It is important, therefore, to capture non-technical information in a knowledge base article early in the incident handling process. For this reason, we also recommend that you create the knowledge base article and register the incident request simultaneously. Even if the incident resolution is not yet known, you can start the knowledge base article and then add resolution information later. This ensures that known details are captured and are available to others who might be working on the same or a similar incident request. By always creating incident requests and knowledge base articles simultaneously, you also ensure that knowledge articles become an integral byproduct of incident registration.

For complete information about creating knowledge base articles, see Creating an article in the Knowledge Management Console.

To create a solution entry from an incident

  1. Open the incident record.
  2. In the Quick Action area on the left side of the Incident form, select Create Related Request > Solution Database.
     The Solution Database form opens with relevant information copied over from the incident request.
  3. Supply information for the mandatory fields.
    1. In the Solution field on the Details tab, type a description of the solution.
    2. On the Assignment tab, complete the Support Company, Support Organization, and Assigned Group fields.
  4. Review the fields on the other tabs for optional information that you can add, which would help others understand the solution.
  5. Click Save.

 

Tip: For faster searching, add an asterisk to the end of your partial query. Example: cert*