How does ServiceNow Admin deal with ServiceNow Problem Management?

sindhuja cynixit
5 min readMay 29, 2020

ServiceNow problem management (SPM) deals with identifying the cause of an error that occurred within the IT infrastructure. ServiceNow problem management is responsible for managing the life cycle of various problems. Moreover, it looks after to prevent those problems and resulting incidents.

The goal of ServiceNow problem management is to eliminate repetitive incidents. And also reduces the impact of those that are unable to control. Here, the ServiceNow admin also has an important part in preventing and resolving the issues that occur. Using problem management, ServiceNow admin acts to monitor the health, usage, etc of S Now and develops various automation processes.

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Moreover, resolving a problem includes the activities of diagnosing the root cause of issues. And it is useful to determine the solution to the problem. Therefore, resolving an issue and eliminating the root cause defines applying a change to the configuration item within the existing IT ecosystem.

The ServiceNow Problem Management also maintains the data of various issues and the solutions applied. Besides, this helps the business unit to reduce the number and impact of incidents over the period.

ServiceNow admin responds to ServiceNow problem management

Since there are various stages within the ServiceNow problem management. These stages are; exploring, set up, and administer, usage, developing and testing, and getting help and results of issues.

The ServiceNow admin will perform the required functionality to set up the problem management system. He also involves the identification of problems and resolves them. There are certain steps involved in this condition.

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Here, the admin can perform Root Cause Analysis to identify the root cause of any issue.

  1. Identify and log the Problem

The ServiceNow admin can manually create a record to make note of an ‘issue’, or it can relate to an Incident record.

  1. Update & investigate the Problem

The updates of the problem are transmitted via E-mail. Besides, the S Now admin may choose the inbound E-mail set up to achieve this.

Service Level Agreements (SLA)

The SLAs are useful to identify primary tasks as well as monitor team progress in solution management.

Inactivity tracker

The S Now admin creates various events. These are triggered when the problem is not resolved within a certain period. Moreover, this event may include a script or an email notification.

  1. Resolve the Problem

Once the issue is resolved, the Incidents relate to the issue are automatically closed. Besides, if the admin is unable to find a solution to the given problem, then it can be termed as a Known Error that saves time in the future.

In the next step, the ServiceNow admin uses to create a Problem Task to identify the affected area. Here, he can assign two teams. One team each for network and server domains. For instance, if the Incident or problem is critical before the particular server is fixed. Then the admin needs to find a temporary solution like an alternative server. To make a permanent solution to the issue, it might require a software patch or change from the server team to fix the Email server.

Once the issue is recognized, the admin fixes the issue that caused the problem. Thus, the ServiceNow admin responds and fixes the problems for further solutions.

ServiceNow Problem Management reports

ServiceNow problem management provides dynamic analytics and reporting solutions. The Analytics and Reporting Solutions and in-form analytics include predesigned dashboards. Moreover, these dashboards include a reasonable data display. It helps the users improve their business processes much better.

The ServiceNow admin uses the Performance Analytics widgets on the dashboard to display data over the period. Moreover, he analyzes the client’s business process and identifies areas of improvement for better performance.

The reporting solutions provide all the records required to analyze many general applications. Besides, the S Now admin enables it to customize these records to use in the production ecosystem of business.

To enable the solution process for ServiceNow Problem Management, a ServiceNow admin can move to Performance Analytics > Guided Setup on the menu. Now, by a click on Get Started button, it will take to the section for S Now Problem Management. Moreover, this guided setup takes the user throughout the setup and configuration process.

Now, complete the configuration and run the data collection works to make the dashboards active.

Furthermore, to enable the process of an Analytics and Reporting Solution, the user must have permission to use Performance Analytics. It is useful along with the relevant ServiceNow product. For instance, to enable the CSM — Advanced Analytics and Reporting Solution, the user must need permission to use P Analytics for Customer Service Management (CSM).

Problem Management life cycle in ServiceNow

ServiceNow Problem Management supports the ITIL process to identify and fix the main cause of problems that result in incidents. The user can record problems, attach incidents, and assign them to respective groups. Moreover, he can get knowledge from problems, changes, communicate, and manage issues to its resolution and reporting.

Each of these problems emerges as a task record through different factors. These problems shared with the S Now Problem Management team to check and resolve them. There several steps involved in finding a problem to resolve it well. These are;

  • Identifying & logging problems
  • Investigate and update problems
  • Resolve problems

Identifying & logging problems

A problem created in various ways. Attaching a problem with a configuration item using CMDB helps the S Now PM team very well. It helps to check the affected items and their relation with other items. A problem may relate to one or more incidents within the Incidents list. The association becomes automatic if the problem has emerged through an incident.

Investigate and update problems

The S Now Problem Management team includes a problem model process to deal with several issues. These may relate to the system with workflows. Moreover, these workflows include many standards and they automate the process.

ServiceNow Problem Management is responsible for managing the life cycle of various problems. Here, the state transition of a problem routes the user via different stages of a problem life cycle. They are from creation to closure. Moreover, ServiceNow Problem Management has a single aim i.e. identifying and solving the issues within the layers that cause severe Incidents.

The process includes many states. Each of these states is very important for the success of the process and the quality of service delivered. These states are;

New — Assess — Root Cause Analysis — Fix — Resolved — Closure.

If the ServiceNow admin requires any help in resolving the problem, and then he can create & assign the task to the SPM team or specific group or users to solve it well.

With the above details, I hope you got an idea of how a ServiceNow admin deals with S Now Problem Management and its various aspects. The job involves typically from finding an incident or issue and make sure it resolved within a given time. It includes several stages and steps that the admin of the team members need to manage. Moreover, the lifecycle of a problem makes it understand that how a problem arises and the team solves it.

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