Legacy Problem form

  • Release version: Zurich
  • Updated July 31, 2025
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Legacy Problem form

    The Legacy Problem form in ServiceNow’s Zurich release provides a structured way to capture and manage problem records, helping customers track issues affecting business services and configuration items. It enables prioritization, assignment, and documentation of problems with key fields designed to support efficient resolution workflows and communication.

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    Key Fields and Their Practical Use

    • Business service: Identifies the affected business service. When selected, it shows other active tasks impacting the same service and allows viewing of the Business Service Management (BSM) dependency map, helping understand service impact.
    • Configuration item (CI): Specifies the CI linked to the problem, with the CI class indicating problem type (e.g., hardware, network).
    • Change request: Links related change requests to the problem for coordinated resolution.
    • Major problem: Checkbox to flag high-priority problems needing special review.
    • Knowledge: Checkbox to automatically generate a knowledge article upon problem closure, supporting knowledge sharing.
    • State: Tracks problem lifecycle states—Open, Pending Change, Known Error (with workaround), and Closed/Resolved—to reflect current status and resolution progress.
    • Impact, Urgency, Priority: Impact and Urgency are selected manually to reflect business effect and resolution urgency. Priority is read-only and computed based on these values, guiding service desk response speed.
    • Assignment group: Automatically populated based on the CI or service offering, ensuring the right support group is engaged. This can be overridden by creating specific properties. Role-based access control restricts assignment to groups with certain admin roles.
    • Assigned to: The specific user responsible for the problem, auto-assigned if assignment rules apply.
    • Parent: Links to a parent task if applicable, supporting hierarchical problem management.
    • Short description and Description: Provide a concise summary and detailed explanation of the problem for clarity and record-keeping.
    • Work notes list: Allows users to add themselves to receive notifications on work note updates, facilitating collaboration and monitoring of problem progress.

    Practical Benefits for ServiceNow Customers

    • Efficiently identify and document problems affecting critical business services and CIs.
    • Prioritize and manage problem resolution based on impact and urgency with automatic priority calculation.
    • Leverage automated assignment rules to route problems to the correct support groups or individuals, reducing manual effort and errors.
    • Maintain visibility into problem status and collaborate through work notes and notifications.
    • Support knowledge management by creating articles from resolved problems, enhancing organizational learning.

    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 (other active tasks) 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 dependency map 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.