Legacy Problem form

Release version: Australia

Updated March 12, 2026

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Summary of Legacy Problem Form

The Legacy Problem Form is designed to manage problems affecting business services and configuration items (CIs) within ServiceNow. It allows users to input critical information regarding the nature and status of problems to facilitate effective resolution and tracking.

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Key Features

Business Service: Links the problem to a specific business service, enabling users to view related active tasks and dependencies.
Configuration Item: Identifies the type of problem by selecting the relevant CI class (e.g., hardware, network).
Change Request: Associates any relevant change requests with the problem.
Major Problem: A checkbox to prioritize the problem for review.
Knowledge Submission: Automatically submits a knowledge article upon problem closure.
State: Indicates the problem's status (e.g., Open, Pending Change, Known Error, Closed/Resolved).
Impact and Urgency: Assessment fields to gauge the effect on business and the allowable delay for resolution.
Priority: Reflects how quickly the service desk must address the problem, based on Impact and Urgency values.
Assignment Group: Automatically populated based on business rules; can be overridden with custom properties.
Assigned To: Designates a specific user for problem management.
Parent Task: Links to a parent problem for better tracking.
Short and Detailed Descriptions: Allows for concise and comprehensive problem documentation.
Work Notes List: Enables users to monitor updates by adding themselves to the notification list.

Key Outcomes

Utilizing the Legacy Problem Form helps ServiceNow customers effectively track and resolve problems affecting their services. It ensures clear communication regarding problem status, impact, and necessary actions, ultimately leading to improved service reliability and user satisfaction.

Description of the field values for the legacy problem form.

Table 1. Problem form fields
Name	Definition
Business service	Business service that the problem applies to. If you select a business service as the configuration item and that business service is also listed as the configuration item in any other active task, the active tasks icon () appears. Click the icon to view the list of all the other active tasks that are affecting the business service. You can view the BSM map (dependency view) of the selected business service by clicking the dependency icon .
Configuration item	Configuration item (CI) that the problem applies to. The CI class of the selected configuration item identifies the type of problem, for example, hardware, network, or database.
Change request	Change request associated with the problem.
Major problem	Check box to prioritize a problem and highlight that it needs a review.
Knowledge	Check box to automatically submit a knowledge article when a problem is closed.
State	State of the problem: Open: Open and unassigned. Pending Change: Waiting for the corresponding change request to be closed. Known Error: This problem is not going to be fixed and there is a workaround. Users with the itil role have access to the Known Errors module. Closed/Resolved: The problem is fixed and closed.
Impact	Effect that the problem has on business. Select the appropriate impact level (High, Medium, or Low).
Urgency	Extent to which the problem resolution can bear delay. Select the appropriate urgency level (High, Medium, orLow).
Priority	How quickly the service desk should address the problem (Critical, High, Moderate, Low, or Planning). The Priority field is read-only and is set according to the Impact and Urgency values entered.
Assignment group	The group who will work on the incident. The business rule Populate Assignment Group based on CI/SO populates the Assignment group field based on the support group available for the configuration item (CI) or the Service offering consecutively. Note: The business rule is triggered when an incident is created or updated and when the Assignment group and the Assigned to field is empty. If you want to override the default value, you need to create new properties and provide the field in the property value that must be used to populate the Assignment group field. Create the properties in the following order of preference: com.snc.problem.ci_assignment_group.field_name: identifies which CI field populates the Assignment group field. com.snc.problem.service_offering_assignment_group.field_name: identifies which service offering field populates the Assignment group field. Note: The sys_user_group read ACL calls the SNCRoleUtil function. The function verifies whether the group that is reviewed contains either the admin role or security_admin role. The function allows the user to view the group only if the user has the same role. As a result, a user with the itil role cannot assign an incident to a group that has the admin role or security_admin role nor to any group whose parent has those role.
Assigned to	Specific user that the problem is assigned to. If an assignment rule applies, the problem is automatically assigned to the appropriate user or group.
Parent	The parent task for this problem.
Short description	Summary of the problem.
Description	Detailed description of the problem.
Work notes list	Users who receive notification when work notes are added to the problem. Click the Add me icon to add yourself to the work notes list for problems you are interested in monitoring.