Should Problems Auto Resolve Incidents?

[nickm5816667392]

Hi all, l'm receiving conflicting information and would like to know what the majority of others are doing.

We're in the middle of implementing Problems in our ITSM platform. We're running Zurich.

Looking to know how others are handling:

1. Does resolving a Problem automatically resolve the incidents that are linked to it? If so, where do the resolution notes for the incidents come from? Is it coming from the "Fix notes" section? I took that as detailed information written by IT that explains in detail how the problem was fixed. I don't look at it as high level notes that the end user should receive.
2. Are you utilizing the Communicate Workaround or Communicate Fix (kind of ties into my question 1 above) at all? In our environment these buttons work, but they simply add a work note to the affected incidents. We only have the system set to email the caller for comments. Work notes are supposed to be internal.

As always, appreciate your insight! This community has been super helpful in getting us through our ServiceNow journey.

[AndersBGS]

Hi @nickm5816667392 ,

as far as I remember according to best practice, then an incident should be resolved  and a problem created, if there is a workaround implemented but no permanent solution found… I wouldn’t wait with the incident resolution until permanent solution is found.

[Its_Azar]

Hi there @nickm5816667392 

A resolved Problem means the root cause is fixed, but incidents may still need validation from support teams or users.

Also, I’d avoid exposing the Problem “Fix notes” to end users since those are typically internal details.

For the Communicate Workaround/Fix actions, OOB they mainly create work notes on related incidents. Since work notes are internal, users won’t get emails unless you customize the notification logic or use additional comments instead.

So it should be like thhis-

• Fix notes = internal technical details

• Additional comments/customer updates = user-facing communication

[Tanushree Maiti]

Hi @nickm5816667392 

Q1: Problem Fix Notes are being copied into the Incident Work Notes.

A:  Business rule on problem table "Raise an event when State changes " which triggers an event  " problem.state_change" , this event triggers a script action " Update Incident when Problem closes", which updates the fields on incident  (Refer: https://www.servicenow.com/community/incident-management-forum/query-on-fix-notes-copied-from-proble...)

Q2: Both "Communicate workaround" and "Communicate Fix" work essentially the same way.

"

1. The UI action takes the value in the pertinent field (e.g. 'work_around' or Resolution Information > Fix notes)
2. Places that value in the activity stream of the related incidents
3. The system notification to the incident caller is triggered with the newly added entry in the activity stream"

https://www.servicenow.com/community/itsm-forum/how-does-communicate-workaround-and-communicate-fix-...

https://www.servicenow.com/docs/r/it-service-management/problem-management/communicate-workaround.ht...

But Many clients follow the practice : once problem created, then close the incident in order to get rid of SLA breach.