Problem Management use case

  • Release version: Washingtondc
  • Updated February 1, 2024
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Problem Management Use Case

    The Problem Management use case focuses on preventing problems and reducing incidents within ServiceNow. It allows organizations to capture and manage information about affected configuration items (CIs), such as assets, to document updates, repairs, and retirements. This systematic approach enables tracking of asset locations, usage, and changes over time, ultimately aiming to minimize the impact of unavoidable incidents.

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    Key Features

    • Impact Assessment: Understand how problems affect services and service offerings.
    • Dynamically Route Problems: Identify impacted services to address issues effectively.
    • CSDM Data Elements: Utilize related lists to identify users and groups affected by outages, including:
      • Service Subscriptions by Company
      • Service Subscriptions by Department
      • Service Subscriptions by Group
      • Service Subscriptions by Location
      • Service Subscriptions by User
    • Business and Technical Service Offerings: Differentiate approval processes based on business criticality and technical assignments.
    • Environment Filtering: Filter non-production environments when identifying service impacts.

    Key Outcomes

    The integration of the CSDM framework with Problem Management allows for a clearer context regarding the CIs involved in problems. To determine impact and root causes, follow these steps:

    • Populate the Configuration Item attribute on the Problem form with the affected CI item or service.
    • (Optional) Use the Service and Service Offering attributes to refine CI selections.
    • (Optional) Access the Affected CI related list to identify potential causes of the problem.

    These processes enhance the ability to manage and resolve problems efficiently within your organization.

    The Problem Management use case is described in this section.

    Problem Management is used to prevent problems and the occurrence of resulting incidents. It also aims at eliminating recurring incidents and minimizing the impact of incidents that cannot be prevented. With Problem Management, you can capture information on affected configuration items (CIs), with type as asset, in a problem to keep a record of the updated, repaired, swapped, or retired configuration items. By keeping track of the assets, you can identify the location of the assets, their usage and when the assets were changed. Using Problem Management, you to monitor and manage the assets in your company using a systematic approach.

    If a configuration item (CI) has resulted in a problem, use the dependency view to identify other configuration items (CIs) affected by the CI that caused the problem. You can then associate affected configuration items (CIs) with a problem record to find out how the problem affects other CIs with dependent relationships.

    Key features of the Problem Management use case

    The CMDB, when used by the CSDM framework, provides value to Problem Management in the following ways:
    • Understand the impact of the problem on services and service offerings.​
    • Dynamically route problems.
    • Identify one or more impacted services to address the problem.​

    CSDM data elements available for use by Problem Management.

    The CSDM data elements used in Problem Management are:

    1. Subscription: Related lists on service offerings that identify who has access to the offering and thus may be impacted in an outage. A problem can identify impact using the subscribed by tables. The related lists are as follows:
      • Service Subscriptions by Company [service_subscribe_company]
      • Service Subscriptions by Department [service_subscribe_department]
      • Service Subscriptions by Group [service_subscribe_sys_user_grp]
      • Service Subscriptions by Location [service_subscribe_location]
      • Service Subscriptions by User [service_subscribe_sys_user]
    2. Business service offering may be used by problems to provide the business approver based on approval_group and business_criticality. A business service may have multiple offerings, each with a different criticality.
    3. Technical service offering may be used by problems to provide the technical approver approval_group and technical assignment group on the attribute assignment_group.
    4. Application service may be used to provide prod and non-prod (DEV, QA, UAT, etc.) environments. Non-prod environments may be filtered out if desired. The legacy used_for attribute maps to the environment attribute. You should use the environment attribute.
      Note:
      Some service offerings may identify the environment of the offering as well.

    Results of the Problem Management use case

    The CSDM framework provides Problem Management context for problems on what CIs may be involved.

    To determine the impact and root cause, compete the following steps:
    1. Populate the Configuration Item attribute on the Problem form, configuration_item, with the CI item or service affected.
    2. (Optional) Use the Service and Service Offering attributes on the Problem form to help narrow down the list of configuration items to choose from. This feature is not available with the base system and needs additional configuration.
    3. (Optional) Use the Affected CI related list to identify the CIs that may have caused the problem.