Problem Management

Problem Management is a process that minimizes the effect of errors in infrastructure or service delivery on customers. It enables you to diagnose and correct flaws in your Information Technology (IT) infrastructure to obtain the highest possible stability in IT Service Delivery.

Search for	Example	Results
A single word	`cat`	Topics that contain the word "cat". You will also find its grammatical variations, such as "cats".
A phrase. You can specify that the search results contain a specific phrase.	`"cat food"` (quotation marks)	Topics that contain the literal phrase "cat food" and all its grammatical variations. Without the quotation marks, the query is equivalent to specifying an OR operator, which finds topics with one of the individual words instead of the phrase.

Search for	Operator	Example
Two or more words in the same topic	`AND` `and` `+` (plus symbol) `&` (ampersand)	`cat AND dog` `"cat food"+milk` `"cat food"&"dog food"`
Either word in a topic	`OR` `or` `\|` (pipe)	`cat OR dog` `cat \| dog`
Topics that do not contain a specific word or phrase	`NOT` `not` `!` (exclamation point)	`NOT cat` `! dog`
Topics that contain one string and do not contain another	`^` (caret)	`cat ^ mouse`
A combination of search types	`( )` parentheses	`cat + (dog \| mouse)` `cat \| dog + (! mouse)`

You can use Service Management Problem Management to identify the underlying reasons for one or more related incidents. You can create workarounds, identify known errors, and define permanent solutions that minimize the effects of these related incidents. Problem Management cannot only reduce the volume of incidents but also save time and money. Problem Management enables you to:

Identify, record, track, and resolve problems.

Prevent recurrence of the same problems.

Create automatic alerts and notifications when a problem, task, or known error creates a new problem, or the problem owner or status changes.

Escalate problems automatically when they are not resolved in a timely manner.

Record solutions and make them available to affected user groups.

Find opportunities for improvements.

React aggressively to problems that relate to incidents.

Proactively resolve issues before incidents occur.

Reduce the number of incidents for related service assets and configuration items.

Note If you work with data domains and you want to manually change existing domain assignments, you must first add the Data domains field to the relevant forms. For more information on adding fields to forms, see How to edit a form. For more information on data domains, see Data domain segmentation.