1. Problem Detection

Trend analysis is the key to spot the Problems. A Trend analysis helps in giving a proactive approach to the Problem Management by which you can avoid the occurrence of the problem earlier rather than resolving the problem at a later stage. The reports in ServiceDesk Plus gives you information on identifying the real causes of Incidents created earlier and what should be identified as a problem. Get the pattern of failure from an Item based reports (Report on Request by Item and Report on Problems by Item) and identify the IT service which has to be improved.

2. Problem Logging

The Problem logging is critical as all the necessary information and conclusion from the incident has to be captured while creating the Problem. Create a problem from the Incidents maintaining the complete association and the information from it. Avoid duplicates by searching for similar existing problems before the creation of a new Problem.

3. Categorization

Problem categorization is very essential to avoid ambiguities. ServiceDesk Plus helps in applying the incident categorization automatically to a Problem when it is created and this helps in keeping the Problem technicians in the same level of understanding as the Incident technicians. When the number of incidents raised is more, it might be a painful task to search these incidents and associate to the Problem. The categorization makes it simpler to search the incidents and associate these with the Problem.

4. Prioritization

Focus on the business critical problems based on the problem prioritization. Problem prioritization helps technicians to identify critical problems that need to be addressed. Impact and Urgency associated with a problem decides which problems need to be addressed first. When a problem is created from an incident, the impact, urgency and priority values get assigned from it automatically and reduce the task of prioritizing the problem for technicians.

ServiceDesk Plus also helps in identifying the Asset-User relationship at the time of the IT service failure and defining the problem priority

5. Investigation and Diagnosis

Problem investigation results in getting at the root cause of the problem and initiating actions to resume the failed service. Analyze the impact, root cause and symptoms of the problem to provide a problem resolution. Make an announcement with the problem symptoms to avoid the creation of multiple incidents.

6. Solution

The successful diagnosis of a root cause results in changing the problem to a Known-Error and suggesting a workaround. ServiceDesk Plus helps in categorizing the solutions into three- Known-Error Record, Workaround and Resolution. Change the problem into a Known-Error record automatically when you add a work-around or a solution. Browsing through these known-error record by the end-users helps in resolving the incidents by themselves and reducing the inflow of incidents. These also help in lowering the incident resolution time by the incident technicians.

The work-arounds and problem resolutions automatically get added with the solution list and help to have a common place where we can search for all the help documents

7. Closure

Problem closure is very critical as closure confirms that all apects of the user problems are addressed to the user satisfaction. ServiceDesk Plus helps to ensure that all the associated incidents are closed with a proper fix or resolution to the failure reported using the Problem closure rules.