Investigating and tracking problems
To create problem investigations
If an incident review uncovers a recurring problem that is triggering incident requests, the problem coordinator creates a problem investigation in Smart IT and assigns it to a specialist. The problem coordinator can create a new problem investigation from the Smart IT navigation bar or from an existing incident ticket.
To create a problem investigation from scratch, select Create New > Problem Investigation in the Smart IT navigation bar. Complete required and optional fields, and then save the problem investigation. After you save the problem investigation, you can access it in the system, and other users with appropriate permissions can view and update it.
To create a related problem investigation from an incident, in the incident request form, open the Related Items tab and select Create > Related Problem.
To create a known error from a problem investigation
If a specialist recommends that a change is the best way to remove the root cause of a problem, the change is initiated by creating a known error and assigning it to the change coordinator of the affected service. If BMC Knowledge Management is installed in your environment, you can also create knowledge articles to describe known errors. The information in the knowledge articles could be useful to subsequent users who encounter or analyze the same or similar issues and problems.
You can also create a known error from a problem investigation by opening the problem ticket, set the Status field to Completed and the Status Reason field to Known Error. A draft known error is created.
You can also create a related known error from a problem investigation by opening the problem ticket, click the Related Items tab, and select Create > Related Known Error.
To create a related change request from a problem investigation or known error
If a problem coordinator or change coordinator believes that a change is required to address the root cause of a problem or a known error, the coordinator creates a related change request in Remedy with Smart IT. Creating a related change request from a problem investigation or known error allows the coordinator to manage and track the required BMC Remedy IT Service Management record and efficiently implement a structural solution. The change ticket appears in the Related Items tab of the problem investigation, and the Created and Created By relationships are automatically established. See Creating-and-managing-change-requests, which explains the entire lifecycle of a change request.
To create a related change request, open the Related Items tab of the problem investigation or known error and select Create > Related Change Request.
To view and update problem investigations and known errors
A Smart IT user such as a problem coordinator, service desk agent, or change coordinator can view the details of a problem investigation any time after it is created, to easily assess what the problem investigation is about, who is working on it, and what has happened with the investigation over time. See Viewing-and-updating-tickets opening and viewing tickets, changing details, or adding new information.
You can open a problem investigation or known error by using any of the following methods:
- Ticket console
- Relationship to another record
- Update stream
- Push notification
- Email notification
To update a problem investigation or known error, click the pencil icon for the ticket or for the field group that you want to update.
To relate existing tickets to problem investigations and known errors
You can relate an existing ticket such as an incident or change request to a problem investigation or known error. When you relate an existing ticket to one of these items, the ticket appears in the Related Items tab of the problem investigation. See Relating-items-to-the-current-ticket and Overview-of-information-displayed-on-a-ticket-in-Smart-IT for detailed information.
To relate an existing ticket to a problem investigation or known error, open the Related Items tab and select Relate Existing Item and choose the Relationship Type: Identified, Initiated, or Related To.
After you save your selections, they are listed when you select Related Items in the problem or known error.
To create a knowledge article from a problem investigation or known error
To provide instructions, workarounds, or other information pertinent to a problem investigation, a problem coordinator or assignee can create a knowledge article to capture the information required to resolve similar problems. When creating a knowledge article from a problem or known error, key content from the problem or known error records is copied to the knowledge article. For complete information about creating knowledge articles, see Creating-knowledge-articles-for-sharing-information.
To locate existing knowledge articles, open the Resources tab and search for knowledge articles.
If a knowledge article does not exist for a problem you are researching, you can create a new one. Select Create a new article in the Resources tab or select Create New > Knowledge in the Smart IT navigation bar.
Typically, you will use the Problem Solution and Known Error knowledge article templates for problems and known errors. Review the format for the template you want, and click Use selected Template. For additional information about templates, see Setting-up-custom-knowledge-management-templates-with-Smart-IT.
After an article is created, it goes through the usual article life cycle.
Example of managing a problem investigation in Smart IT
Mary Mann is a problem coordinator in the Network Infrastructure group. Mary hosts a monthly incident review in which the review team evaluates incident tickets for the month and identifies recurring incidents for underlying problems with the services they are responsible for. When the team finds an issue with a routing table for network equipment that is causing recurring incident requests, Mary begins the problem investigation process:
- Mary locates an incident that was triggered by the problem, and on the Related Items tab, she selects Create > Related Problem Investigation.
- The new problem investigation is prepopulated with information from the incident, so for now, Mary updates the Investigation Driver field (a required field), and assigns the problem to a specialist. She sets the Investigation Driver to Re-Occurring Incidents. For the assignee, she clicks the pencil icon in the Assignment group. Here she has the option of having Smart IT automatically assign the best-fit group, from which she can select a specialist. However, she instead selects Bob Baxter from the Backoffice Support group, because he has the most experience in dealing with this type of problem.
- After saving the problem investigation, Mary clicks the Share
icon and emails Bob, informing him that he has been assigned the problem investigation. She also clicks the Follow 
icon so she can see updates to the problem investigation as it proceeds. - Mary then relates incidents to the problem investigation. She selects the Related Items tab and clicks Relate Existing Item. She searches for routing table and selects related incidents. From the Relationship Type, list she selects Related to. Then she saves the ticket. The related items now appear on the Related Items tab.
Bob then initiates the root cause analysis. He begins by looking for a temporary workaround while he determines a permanent solution. Bob decides to review knowledge articles, where he identifies a workaround to the issue. He then updates the problem investigation ticket with the workaround:
- In Smart IT, Bob selects Console > Ticket Console to locate and open the problem investigation. Open tickets assigned to him are displayed by default.
- On the Resources tab, Bob finds a knowledge article that provides a workaround to the issue and pins it to the problem ticket .
- Bob then updates the Workaround field with a summary of the procedure and instructions to refer to the knowledge article he pinned to the problem investigation. He then updates the status to Under Investigation and saves the ticket.
- Bob clicks the Share icon and emails Mary to inform her that he has identified a workaround and updated the problem investigation with that information.
With the temporary workaround in place, Bob continues to investigate the root cause. He finds that the solution is to reconfigure the routing table. Before initiating the change process, Bob updates the Root Cause field:
- Bob opens the ticket console and selects the problem investigation from the My Tickets list.
The Root Cause field is not visible because it contains no information. Bob clicks the pencil icon to edit the ticket and scrolls down to locate the Root Cause field. He sets the root cause to Infrastructure Issue. When he saves the changes, the field becomes visible on the ticket.
- Bob adds an Activity Note describing the root cause. He then emails Mary to inform her that he has identified the root cause. Mary emails Bob back, letting him know that the fix requires a change request.
Now that the root cause has been identified, Mary is ready to create a related known error:
- Mary opens the problem investigation, and under Related Items, she clicks Create and selects Related Known Error from the list.
- Mary reviews the imported information in the Known Error form and makes any changes or additions that are needed. She then saves the known error, which subsequently appears on the Related Items tab of the problem investigation.
Mary notifies the incident review team that the root cause has been identified and that a change request will be needed to implement a structural solution. After the team evaluates the root cause, Mary creates the change request:
- Mary opens the problem investigation and selects the Related Items tab at the bottom of the form.
- Mary clicks the Create button and selects Related Change Request.
- Mary follows the procedures in Creating-and-managing-change-requests to complete the change request.
- When the change is implemented, Mary updates the problem investigation status to Completed.
After the change process is complete, Mary sets the status of the problem investigation to Closed, which completes the problem investigation.