KairosLink
Problem management
How to group tickets under a common root cause, publish a workaround to the customer, and resolve every affected ticket in a single action.
When five separate tickets come in and all five are the same failure, handling them individually is repeated work: five investigations, five replies, the same explanation five times.
A problem groups those tickets under a common root cause. You investigate once, resolve once, and closing it resolves every affected ticket with a single message.
Available from KairosBusiness up.
A problem is not a ticket
They are two different things, with their own numbering and their own lifecycle. A ticket does not become a problem: it gets linked to one.
What a problem has that a ticket does not:
| Field | What it is for |
|---|---|
| Root cause | What was causing it. Always internal |
| Workaround | What the customer can do meanwhile. The only thing that can reach them |
| Detection date | When it was detected, editable by hand |
| Knowledge base article | An article linked to the problem |
What a ticket has that a problem does not: an associated computer, SLA, logged time, customer rating and a conversation. A problem has no conversation. You do not reply to it: you investigate it and close it.
Numbers follow the pattern P-{organization}-{number}, on their own sequence. Deleting a problem does not reuse its number.
Permissions
There are four, kept separate, and they appear under the Tickets group on the permissions screen:
| Permission | What it enables |
|---|---|
| View problems | The menu, the list and the read-only record |
| Create problems | The New problem button |
| Edit problems | Changing status and fields, filling in root cause and workaround, linking and unlinking tickets |
| Close problems | The closure panel |
Owner, Admin and Technician have all four by default. The Read-only role has none.
Creating a problem
There are two paths and both lead to the same form.
From the list. Tickets menu, Problems, New problem button.
From a ticket. On the ticket record, Problems panel, Create problem from this ticket link. This is the natural path: you are looking at a ticket and realize it is part of something bigger.
Down that second path the form comes prefilled with the ticket's subject as the title and the customer already selected, and a notice tells you that ticket will be linked when the problem is created.
The fields:
| Field | Required |
|---|---|
| Title | Yes, up to 200 characters |
| Description | No |
| Affected customer (optional) | No. The empty option reads Multiple / undefined |
| Priority | Yes. The same four as tickets, Normal by default |
| Assigned technician (optional) | No |
| Detection date | No. Prefilled with today |
The customer is optional on purpose. A problem affecting several customers is left without one. That is the normal case when the cause sits in something shared: an internet provider, a service outage, an update that broke something.
Every problem starts in Identified.
Linking tickets
You can link from both sides, with the edit problems permission.
From the problem record, Linked tickets panel: you type in the search box (from 2 characters) and each result comes with a Link button. The search looks at number and subject, and returns up to 10 results.
Two things about that search worth knowing: it does not filter by customer or by status. Tickets from other customers in your organization will show up, and so will already resolved or closed ones. That is deliberate, because a problem can cross customers, but check what you are linking.
From the ticket record, Problems panel: same pattern, search box and Link button.
To unlink, the Remove button on the problem record, or the X on the ticket's. Both ask for confirmation.
A ticket can belong to two problems at once. That is intentional: sometimes a failure has two causes. But it has a consequence: if both problems have a publishable workaround, the customer sees one of the two and there is no rule defining which.
A linked ticket that closes on its own
Nothing happens automatically. The ticket stays linked, keeps showing in the panel and keeps counting in the total.
The only thing that changes is that it stops appearing in the problem's closure list, because that list only includes open tickets.
And the other way around: every linked ticket being closed does not close or resolve the problem. You close the problem.
Root cause and workaround
Both fields live in the Root cause and workaround panel on the record, and can be filled in at any time and in any status.
The root cause is always internal. It does not reach the customer portal, it is not in any email, and it does not appear on any screen the customer can open. Write whatever you need there.
The workaround can reach the customer, and this is the part to understand properly.
How the workaround gets published
There is no "publish to customer" checkbox. The switch is the problem's status.
For the customer to read the text, two things have to be true at once:
- The problem is in Workaround available status
- The field has text
When both hold, the text appears in the portal of every customer with a linked ticket, above the conversation, under the heading Workaround.
The customer sees only that text. Never the root cause, never the internal problem title, never that other customers are affected.
The consequence that catches people out
Moving the problem to Resolved or Closed removes the workaround from the portal. The status condition no longer holds.
It is consistent: a workaround exists while there is no permanent fix. But nothing warns you on screen, so keep it in mind: if you want the customer to keep those instructions, also post them as a reply on their ticket, or publish an article in the knowledge base.
The statuses
There are six:
| Status | What it means |
|---|---|
| Identified | Detected, not investigated |
| Under investigation | Someone is working on finding the cause |
| Root cause identified | You know what is causing it |
| Workaround available | There is a workaround, and the customer sees it |
| Resolved | The cause has been eliminated |
| Closed | Done |
There is no mandatory order: any status can move to any other from the Status dropdown in the Detail panel.
With one important exception: Closed is not in that dropdown. The only way to close a problem is the Close problem button, because closing does considerably more than change a status.
Careful when editing a closed problem
When the problem is closed, the status dropdown has nothing selected, because Closed is not on the list. The browser shows the first option, which is Identified.
If you go into that panel to change anything else (the priority, the assignee) and press Save, the problem reopens as Identified without you choosing it, and the resolution and closing dates are cleared.
If you need to edit a closed problem, do it from the other panels: root cause, linked tickets and knowledge base can all be edited without touching the status.
The dates
They are stamped automatically: the root cause date the first time the problem reaches that status or a later one, and the resolution and closing dates when they apply.
Reopening a problem clears the resolution and closing dates. The root cause date survives, because it measures when it was first identified and that does not change.
Closing the problem
This is the action with the most consequences in the module. Read this before using it the first time.
Problem closure panel, Close problem button. A dialog opens with:
- Checkboxes for the linked tickets that are still open, each with its number, subject and customer. Already resolved or closed ones do not appear.
- A message field, labelled Resolution message for the checked tickets.
Then Confirm closure.
What exactly happens
For every ticket you check:
- A public reply is posted on that ticket, with the message you wrote. It is visible to the customer and there is no option to make it internal.
- The ticket moves to Resolved and gets its date stamped.
- Two emails go out to the customer: one saying there is a new reply, and one saying the ticket has been resolved, with the five stars for rating.
And the problem moves to Closed.
The message is the same for every checked ticket. There is no per-ticket customization and no variables to substitute. Write it knowing different customers will read it.
Before you press Confirm
Three things worth keeping in mind:
- The emails have gone out. If you checked five tickets, ten emails went to end customers.
- The tickets do not revert. Reopening the problem undoes nothing that happened to them: they stay resolved and the posted reply stays there. To roll back you have to go ticket by ticket from the help desk.
- The workaround stops showing in the portal, because the problem is no longer in the status that publishes it.
Closing without touching the tickets
You can, and it is the right call in several cases: check no boxes and only the problem closes. The tickets stay as they were, with no reply and no email.
If there is no open linked ticket at all, the dialog tells you so and only closes the problem.
Reopening
The problem reopens by changing the status in the Detail panel. That clears the resolution and closing dates.
Closing twice does nothing: the second attempt is rejected without touching anything.
What the customer sees
| Element | Visible |
|---|---|
| The workaround, while in Workaround available status | Yes |
| The reply posted when the problem is closed | Yes |
| The root cause | No |
| The problem's title or number | No |
| That their ticket is grouped with others | No |
| How many customers are affected | No |
From the customer's side a problem is invisible. All they notice is that a workaround appeared on their ticket, and later a reply resolving it.
What it does not do today
- The title and description cannot be edited after the problem is created. They are set at creation and stay that way.
- There is no automatic problem creation. Not by ticket correlation, not by monitoring, not by AI: a person creates them.
- A problem has no conversation. There are no replies and no internal notes: the back and forth lives in the linked tickets.
- Nothing changes the status on its own. Not by time, not by ticket count, not because the linked tickets were closed.
- Closure cannot be undone on the ticket side.
Frequently asked questions
When is a problem worth creating instead of just handling the tickets? When the same failure generated more than one ticket and the investigation is a single one. Two tickets already justify it.
Does a problem need a customer? No. If it affects several, leave it on Multiple / undefined.
I filled in the workaround and the customer cannot see it. The text only appears while the problem is in Workaround available status. There is no other box to tick.
I moved the problem to Resolved and the workaround disappeared from the portal. That is expected: it is only published while the status is Workaround available.
Does the customer know their ticket is grouped with others? No. They do not see the problem, its number, or how many others are affected.
Can I put one ticket in two problems? Yes. If both have a publishable workaround, the customer will see one of the two.
I closed the problem and regretted it. You reopen the problem by changing the status. The tickets do not roll back on their own: the reply is already posted and the emails have gone out.
Can I close the problem without resolving the tickets? Yes. Check no boxes.
I closed every linked ticket. Does the problem close? No. You close the problem.
Why can I not edit the problem title? Today you cannot: the title and description are set when it is created.
Updated August 22, 2026