Description

This document outlines the Problem Management Process

Problem Management Process

Freshservice has the ability to run problem management, this will allow us to monitor, track and update problems for the whole of IT to view.

Problems will be the main source of information for any issues that are currently on going. You will be told about any problems by your line manager and then for any further updates please refer to the problem. This will prevent any emails/teams messages being missed by team members.

Raising a Problem

Problems can be raised by any member of IT but they need to be flagged to a line manager before being created so they’re aware of the issue as well. Please follow the solution of how to create a problem when doing this.

A problem can be raised for any major outages or issues we have, as well as any common problems which cause a lot of calls to come in but aren’t critical to the business.

Email Notifications

A email will go to the whole ITdept distribution list whenever a problem is created. A second email will go out the same distribution list once the problem has been closed.

Associating Tickets

Within a problem you can associate tickets, this will allow everyone to see how many tickets are affected by this problem. It is important that all the tickets are left open until the problem is resolved with the final work around. This will be shown at the bottom of the screen and a note left to say the issues has been resolved.

Any new tickets that come in can be associated directly to the problem. This again will let us monitor all the tickets that have been raised/caused by the problem.

If there is a workaround and it has been applied to the ticket, the ticket can be closed but still needs to be associated to the problem

Solutions/Workarounds

You can link Solutions to a problem within Freshservice. If there is a short term workaround this should be kept in the “Workarounds” folder within Solutions in Freshservice.

Problem Management Call

Every 2 weeks, a few select members from each team will join a problem management call so each issue can be discussed and updated via the “notes” tab.

Tasks will be used within the problem as the result of the meetings, tasks will be assigned to members of the IT team so there’s a record of whose done what tasks on the problem.

Closing a Problem

A problem should only be closed if the final solution has been found and not just the work around. All the boxes within the problem should be filled in, including the root cause box, this should state what the issue was caused by. In the “Reason for Closing” a brief explanation of the fix should be entered.