Problem Management in Service Operations Workspace

  • Release version: Australia
  • Updated March 12, 2026
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Problem Management in Service Operations Workspace

    Problem Management in Service Operations Workspace allows users to identify the root causes of recurring incidents or major incidents, enabling effective prevention strategies. It facilitates the management of problems throughout their lifecycle, including sharing workarounds, creating known error articles, and associating related incidents.

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    Key Features

    • Overview Tab: Displays essential information such as summary, analysis, resolution, problem tasks, impact, and work notes. Configuration options are available in the Admin Center.
    • Details Tab: Offers a detailed view of the problem and allows users to add work notes. The State field is read-only, reflecting the problem's current status.
    • Problem Tasks Tab: Lists tasks created for collaboration with other teams to identify fixes.
    • Fix Tasks Tab: Contains fix tasks, specifically configured as change requests in the Service Operations Workspace.
    • Related Records Tab: Shows related incidents, affected configuration items, outages, and knowledge articles.
    • Contextual Side Panel: Provides access to Agent Assist for relevant record searches and actions.

    Key Outcomes

    By utilizing Problem Management, customers can effectively manage problems, collaborate on tasks, and enhance incident deflection through known error articles. This structured approach not only aids in resolving current issues but also prevents future incidents, thereby improving overall service reliability.

    When you have recurring incidents or a major incident, you can create a problem to identify the root cause of the incidents and help prevent them from happening again. Use Service Operations Workspace to manage problems through their life cycle, share workarounds or fixes with related incidents, and create known error articles to help deflect incidents.

    Figure 1. Problem record in Service Operations Workspace
    Problem record in Service Operations Workspace

    Overview tab

    This tab displays the following information about a problem:
    • Summary
    • Analysis information
    • Resolution information
    • Problem tasks and fix tasks
    • Impact
    • Work notes

    You can configure the problem record overview tab and its UI elements in the Service Operations Workspace Admin Center. For more information, see Manage configurations in Service Operations Workspace for ITSM.

    You can optionally enable the following shortcuts, accessible from both the header and Tasks (problem and fix) drop-down menus:

    For all other configuration options, see Configuring Problem Management in Service Operations Workspace.

    Details tab

    This section displays the detailed information of a problem. For information about fields in this section, see Create a problem in Service Operations Workspace.

    From the Compose section, you can add work notes for the problem.

    All fields that are available on the Problem form in ServiceNow AI Platform are available in Service Operations Workspace. However, on the problem form in Service Operations Workspace, the State field is read-only. For information about state transitions of a problem, see Life cycle of a problem.

    For information on how you can configure fields in this tab, see Configuring Problem Management in Service Operations Workspace.

    Problem Tasks tab

    This section displays problems tasks associated with this problem. Problem tasks are created when you need help from other teams to identify a fix for the problem. For information about creating a problem task, see Create a problem task in Service Operations Workspace.

    Fix Tasks tab

    This section displays fix tasks associated with the problem. In Service Operations Workspace, only change requests are configured as fix tasks. For information about the List of related task records (comma-separated) to track as fixes for this Problem property where the fix tasks are configured, see Configure properties for Problem Management in Service Operations Workspace.

    Related records tab

    This section displays the following records related to the problem. You can add a record, create a record, or remove it from the problem.
    • Incidents
    • Affected CIs
    • Outages
    • Knowledge attached from Agent Assist

    Contextual side panel

    From this section, you can access Agent assist and search for relevant records and perform the required actions.

    For more information about Problem Management, see Problem Management.