Hello @Rsomers, the thing I love about freshservice is that you can tailor it fit your organization’s needs. The initial design is to follow ITIL where you have Incident Management and you have Problem, Change, and Release Management.

We think of Incident Management as “Break-Fix” and use Problem Management to record issues that require some Root Cause Analysis, could have possible workarounds and have known errors. Often problem records are generated due to an influx of incident tickets that all resolve around a single issue and require time to get to the actual cause of these issues.

The benefit of using “Related Tickets” (parent-child) is to associate a single issue with all those affected. So in some cases you might see both styles being used. An incident could be a parent ticket to all those others who are having the same issue, and then due to the nature of the issue a problem record is created to dive deeper into finding a solution.

But again, I don’t think there is a right or wrong answer. It is all about what works best for your organization. Hope that helps. Take care :)

@zachary.king Is there an ‘easy’ way to notify all the the associated Incidents to a Problem ticket of when a workaround/solution is found?

My assumption is from a Parent-Child Incident tickets, you can use the FS app that adds/copies notes from the parent to child tickets, so you only have to send 1 update.

With a Problem, what is the best way to notify all those users/requesters that the ‘problem’ has been resolved?

The best way to do this would be to use a “Problem” workflow automator that is triggered by a change to the Problem Record and executes it’s Action on “associated tickets”

Hope that helps! :)

many thanks @zachary.king 

@zachary.king . One thing I have just found, is when the Automator adds the public note to an associated Incident, and sends that as an email to the Requester, if they reply, it will then create a new ticket with subject of “Re: Problem Closed - #PRB-XX]...”.

I would have though t FS would just append to the existing Incident ticket?

Wow, great catch! I wonder if there is some way to work around that…hmm  I have noticed that the other modules that are available for workflow automators are a little neglected compared to ticket automators.

I would say we need to take this to the product team and see if we can get them to add the ticket ID to the subject of the email notification that gets triggered in these cases. It should be the same email template that goes out for “All” public notes added to an incident.

@sanofar.allahpichai any ideas? Thanks :)

Hi @martin.j,

This looks like the default email notification that is triggered when the Problem is closed. This can be configured under Admin → Email Notifications → Problems → Notify Requester when Problem is Closed.

The replies to the problem notification are technically added as a note on the existing problem itself.

In case of the ticket module, if the subject line of the incoming email differs and the ticket ID is not included in the subject, the criteria for our appending rules are not met and a new ticket is created in the system. As @zachary.king mentioned, if we can customize this notification to include the associated ticket ID in the subject line, the replies to it should ideally get appended to the existing ticket.

I’d be able to confirm after taking a look at this specific scenario. Could you drop us an email at support@freshservice.com with the existing and new ticket IDs? We can verify which of the appending rules failed. 

Wishing everyone a wonderful new year

Hello,

I’m trying to get this workflow to work. When I have the trigger for a solution or workaround added to a problem the fields to add the solution or workaround to the associated ticket as a note does not come through. I’m testing with a ticket I created and a problem I created. Maybe that’s an issue? But when I get the email from the system the fields {{ticket.problem.solution}} and {{ticket.problem.workaround}} are empty. 

Unfortunately, while that automation sounds nice, it won’t actually close the associated ticket and you’ll get an error saying “Cannot close the Problem until all associated tickets are closed.” There does not seem to be a way to mass reply with the one solution when you have, say, 150 tickets associated to a problem, short of making the action Change Requested. That still won’t close the ticket, though. You’d have to make another automation saying change Change Requested status to Closed.

Is there really no way to respond to all associated tickets with one solution on the problem?