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:
You must have the ticket Type field available in your ticket form to create this 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 is added to all incident tickets that aren't already solved.
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 the tickets are solved anyway.
To create and solve 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 Submit to update and save the changes to the ticket.
- Return to the problem ticket to view the linked tickets and review the incident
reports.
- When you're ready to solve the problem ticket and linked incidents, add a comment. Note
that the comment you add when solving the problem ticket is only included in unsolved linked
incident tickets.
You may want to use placeholders to personalize the comment for wide distribution. For example:
See Using placeholders.
Use caution when using macros to update problem and incident tickets. See Using macros to update problem and incident tickets. - Solve the problem ticket, then confirm that you want to solve all open linked incident
tickets.
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 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
66 comments
Mayra
Hey, Mike DR,
Got it. So, for the OPS team to fill out the Problem, can they just put the number of the ticket on it?
0
Mike DR
That's correct! They'll manually put the problem ticket on the original ticket, then once the problem ticket is solved, it will automatically solve all linked tickets to the problem ticket.
0
Sam Illingworth
I think it's ridiculous that there's no way to send an update to all linked incidents except when the problem is solved. Sending a public update on the problem ticket should send that update to all the incident tickets. It just should, there's no other way around it. It's just an obvious basic part of problem management. I don't understand why it doesn't work this way in Zendesk.
4
Hope Saldana
Hello! We have an issue using Problem and Incident tickets with our custom statuses. It appears to only respect the original Solved status and not any of our custom Solved statuses. Is there anything in the roadmap to get P/I tickets respecting custom solved statuses?
1
James Skene
Hi
When solving a ticket, the resolution field is required for our agents as this then maps to a customer facing resolution which is populated in our resolution email.
If we have an Incident linked to a Problem and we solve the Problem and linked Incidents, the resolution field is not populated in the Incident meaning the resolution email is triggered and it does not contain the customer facing resolution.
Is there a way to pull the resolution field from the Problem into the linked Incidents? Seems a pretty standard request so I am not sure if I have done something wrong?
Thanks
James
0
D.Fitz
We handle tickets in a handful of languages. If we get two Incident tickets, one German and one French, linked to one Problem ticket and then solve the Problem ticket, is there any way to have the response localized? Or would we just need to create some dynamic content and use a placeholder?
0