Problem-and-incident tickets are useful when a problem or service interruption is reported by more than one person. For example, when the wireless network in an office stops working, several people might file tickets. You can treat the tickets as incident reports. Instead of handling each ticket separately, you can link the tickets to one problem ticket, and then solve the problem ticket to solve all the incident tickets.
Here's the general workflow:
- Identify a service interruption or problem that's causing people to file tickets.
- Create your own ticket to address the problem.
- Change the other tickets to incident tickets and link them to your problem ticket.
- Solve the problem ticket.
When you solve the problem ticket, the status of all the incident tickets is automatically set to solved. The comment added to the problem ticket when solved will be added to all incident tickets that are not yet closed.
Refrain from solving any of the incident tickets directly. Solving an incident ticket still leaves the other tickets unsolved. Save work by solving only the problem ticket. It automatically solves all the linked incident tickets. When the problem ticket is solved, any empty required fields on linked incident tickets are ignored and tickets are solved anyway.
To create problem-and-incident tickets
- After identifying a problem that's causing people to file tickets, create your own ticket describing the problem and set the ticket type to Problem.
- For every other ticket reporting the same problem, set the ticket type to Incident and link it to the problem ticket.
After you set the type to Incident, a second menu appears that lets you link the incident to a problem ticket.
Make sure to click Update to save the changes to the ticket.
- Solve the problem ticket.
The problem ticket has a link to a view of linked tickets so you can review the incident reports.
Solving the problem ticket solves all the incident tickets linked to it. Only the comment added when solving the problem ticket will be included in all linked incident tickets.
Tip: Use dynamic content placeholders to personalize the comment for wide distribution. Example:
For more information, see Using placeholders.
If you decide to reopen the solved problem ticket, the incident tickets aren't updated. They stay solved. If you solved a problem ticket prematurely or if you need to communicate something more to the requesters, you can easily reopen the incident tickets before solving the problem ticket again. Click the Incidents tab when viewing the problem ticket and bulk edit all of the tickets. Submit the tickets as open and proceed with re-solving the problem ticket.
Related topics
84 Comments
On linked tickets we need the ability to attach a document for the final Public comment on the incident tickets.
While the T [text] icon is visible the paperclip is not when we are selecting multiple tickets to edit linked to the Problem ticket.
Is there an APP for this?
Hi everyone,
Is it possible to reply with a dynamic content to a Problem ticket ?
Today, we're sending the message in french and english directly on the Problem ticket, so everyone receive the french & english version.
We would like to auto-adapt the answer and send only the right version to the user depending on his language.
Hey Giovanni,
Yes dynamic content will render correctly when replying to a problem ticket. This is actually a tip mentioned in our Working with problem and incident tickets article which I've linked for you :)
Let us know if you have any other questions!
Hi, Is there a way I can add all the requestors/CC list from incident(multiple) tickets to problem ticket CC list automatically when we link the incident to the problem ticket.
Also, Any possibility to link the incident to already resolved problem ticket. We have cases where the incidents are created but there is already a problem fix ticket created and released recently. Inorder to track better we need this new ticket to linked to the solved problem ticket.
Hi Adarsh,
There wouldn't be a way to automatically copy this information over from the incident ticket to the problem ticket unfortunately. However, when you post a public response to the PT and solve that ticket out, every incident ticket attached to that PT should also receive that update. That means, any CC'd users to the incident ticket should receive the update as well.
As for attaching incident tickets to a solved problem ticket, you should be able to do this already. However, you won't be able to attach an Incident ticket to a Closed problem ticket.
Let me know if you have any other questions for me :)
Thanks Brett,
Is there any trigger we can create to link the problem ticket to incident ticket automatically based on the tags.I have the child_ticket tag in the problem ticket for the incident ticket(which have a parent_ticket tag). Looking for an automated way when I create a problem ticket from the incident ticket(using linked app/project management app) it will automatically link and populate the 'Linked Problem' field with the problem just created.
Thanks
Adarsh Shet
Hi Adarsh,
I did some digging on my end and reached out to our team internally but unfortunately there's no way to automatically link an Incident ticket to a Problem ticket. This would need to be manually done by the agent.
Apologies for not being able to provide an alternative for you at this time :-/
Is there any way of customising the linked ticket view, to include Organisation, for example?
Dave Tonks,
We "kind of" did this by using the same subject on the incident tickets for a one off instance.
We also used the same Form
Thanks guys. I had a thoroughly non-ideal workaround, that involved selecting all linked incidents and bulk-adding a custom tag. Then creating a view that only looks at tickets with that tag.
Not ideal as it doesn't keep track of any new incidents that are added to the problem ticket.
Hi Team,
I can't seem to link incident tickets to a problem ticket which has been solved.
Must a problem ticket be 'less than solved' in order for an incident ticket to be linked to it?
Hey Oliver,
Agents should be able to link an incident to a problem ticket even if the problem ticket has been set to Solved. Can you confirm the problem ticket isn't in closed status instead?
If the PT is set to closed, then that's expected behavior since you cannot make updates to tickets in that status.
Let me know!
Hi,
Anyone can help with building the reports in Explore on problems & incidents ticket? Can we have it visible how many incidents linked to the problem in the reports without going to the actual ticket?
Hi Sylvia,
https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360024067294-Explore-recipe-Top-problem-tickets-by-unsolved-incidents
Hope it helps.
Kind Regards,
Sergiu Birca
for some reason - under my ticket type i do not see the Problem or Incident.
I think we have that customized. Any idea how i can the Problem or Incident to show up?
Hi,
I was wondering if Problem-incident ticket type could be duplicated in any way in Zendesk? I know that I can create custom ticket types but what I need is the behavior of the Problem-incident ticket type for my custom ones.
Here is my use case:
I'll have to create a new drop-down menu with my own custom made ticket type:
- Problems (I'll keep this one)
- Incident (I'll keep this one too)
- New feature
- Struggle
I need all of these custom type to work like the standard Problem-incident type (meaning that I'll need to link all the same ticket to one New feature ticket for instance)
Is it something that can be done?
It looks like the "solving the Problem ticket updates and solves the Incident tickets" part only works if the Incident tickets have their status set to Open. Can you confirm that tickets in an On-Hold (I'm waiting for someone) status will not be updated and solved?
Hey Sharon,
I double checked on my end and on-hold tickets that are linked to problem tickets should also be set to solved once the Problem ticket has been updated and solved out. There wouldn't be a way to change this functionality so if you prefer not to have the ticket solved out you would need to unlink the on-hold ticket.
Let me know if you have any other questions!
I've created custom made dropdown ticketfields where I define a substatus of the problem ticket.
(Confirmed by Development, Ready for testing, etc)
Is there a way if I set a substatus on the initial problem ticket, is it possible that the incendent tickets are also updated?
Hi Maarten,
Unfortunately, I think the only way to do this would require writing custom API scripts outside of Zendesk. Triggers don't have a way to perform actions when a custom field value (in this case, you sub-status) changes, and they also don't have a way to perform actions on Incident tickets when a trigger is activated on their attached Problem ticket. There is an API endpoint that can give you a list of the Incidents attached to a given Problem Ticket (List Ticket Incidents), and there is an API endpoint that allows you to update a list of tickets all at once (Update Many Tickets). But I don't know that there's an easy way to detect when that field changes in the Problem ticket, so you'd likely end up using a lot of API calls watching every ticket. Maybe someone else has a better idea?
Hello,
I have to identify the "Incident" tickets which are link or not no a "Problem" Ticket. But I don't see any condition in triggers, nor tag to do that.
It was difficult to read all the comments of this article, but I think I didn't see any one.
I hope I am wrong... So if someone have a solution, i'll be very interested to get it.
Thanks
Is there a way to create an incident from a problem ticket in the Zendesk support UI? We have situations where a "problem" ticket comes in, and we need to create incident tickets manually. The only way I know of linking a newly created incident ticket is to backtrack to the problem ticket and link manually. It would be nice if there was was a way to create incident from problem ticket (unless there is and I'm just missing it!)
Hi Amber,
Presently there doesn't exist a mechanism to create linked incident tickets from a problem ticket itself; you would need to manually create new incident tickets or connect existing tickets to your newly created PT.
Let us know if you have any additional questions.
Beau | Customer Advocate
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