KCS and Problem Management Integration

The Knowledge-Centered Service (KCS) methodology has provided the breakthrough that companies needed to make Knowledge Management practical and useful. 4me offers a comprehensive set of features to support their KCS implementation. When they start adding knowledge in 4me, they can, for example, see how often requests have been resolved using the instructions of each knowledge article.


It is great when service desk analysts and specialists can rely on these instructions to quickly complete requests in a consistent manner. It is even better when the organization sees that these knowledge articles are used by end users to answer their questions, or solve their issues, without ever having to submit a request. It saves the support teams time when end users can help themselves.

But as organizations mature their KCS implementation, they can take this one step further. When an article is used frequently, there is clearly a need for this knowledge. Ideally, however, users should not be struggling in the first place. If they did not have to spend time looking up the instructions in the 4me knowledge base, they would avoid some frustration and be more productive. Good for them and good for their employers.
So when a problem manager sees that an article gets used a lot, it is time to start thinking of a way to avoid the need for the article altogether. Finding a permanent solution is something that is best done in ITIL’s Problem Management process. That is why 4me is now the first enterprise service management application that has integrated its KCS functionality with its Problem Management capabilities.
To open a problem from a knowledge article, a problem manager opens the article and selects the option ‘Relate to New Problem…’ from the Actions menu. Simple.
This opens a problem of the category ‘Reactive’ with the knowledge article already linked to it.

After saving the new problem, its Workaround field shows the Instructions of the knowledge article. This means that these instructions can continue to be maintained in the knowledge article and the problem’s workaround will automatically stay in sync.

While the specialists are working to find a permanent solution for the problem, it will be available in the Service Hierarchy Browser (SHB) as a Known Error. That makes it easy for service desk analysts and specialists to apply it when new requests are submitted for the problem. Dragging and dropping the problem from the SHB onto a request causes the request to be be linked to the problem and the instructions of the knowledge article to be added to the Note field of the request.
4me already had the most tightly integrated Incident Management and Problem Management process functionality (e.g. try applying a known error to a request). By integrating the Problem Management and Knowledge Management processes, 4me takes its leading position one step further.