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Problem records are sureops’s mechanism for tracking recurring or structurally significant issues that need a fix beyond closing the immediate incident. Where incidents are transient — they open, resolve, and close — problems persist until the underlying cause is addressed.

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What is a problem record?

A problem record is created when:
  • An incident recurs with the same root cause (sureops detects this automatically and links the new incident to the existing problem record)
  • A closed incident is manually promoted to a problem by a team member using the Promote to problem button on the Incident Hub
  • The post-closure analysis agent identifies a pattern that warrants structural follow-up
Every problem record has:
  • A root cause analysis (RCA) written by the problem-investigation agent
  • A status: Open, In progress, or Resolved
  • A list of contributing incidents
  • Action items generated by the agent (proposed monitors, runbook updates, code fixes)
  • A fix PR (draft) opened against the relevant service repo when GitHub is connected

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Viewing the problem list

Navigate to Problems in the sidebar to see all problem records for the selected environment. The list shows:
  • Problem title
  • Status badge
  • Number of contributing incidents
  • Date of last recurrence
  • Assigned owner (if set)
Click any row to open the problem detail page.

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Problem detail page

The problem detail page shows the full picture for a single problem record.

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Root cause analysis

The RCA is a structured analysis produced by the problem-investigation agent. It covers:
  • What the root cause is
  • Which services are affected
  • How the root cause was confirmed (telemetry evidence, log patterns)
  • Recommended permanent fixes

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Contributing incidents

A table of every incident that contributed to this problem, with links back to the Incident Hub for each one. This gives you the full history of the recurring pattern over time.

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Action items

The agent generates specific, executable follow-ups for each problem:
  • Proposed monitors — metric thresholds or alert rules to add to prevent future recurrence
  • Runbook updates — sections of your runbook that should be updated based on what was learned
  • Code fixes — when a code-level fix is appropriate, the agent opens a draft PR
Action item status is tracked (Open, In progress, Done). You can assign action items to team members and mark them complete as your team works through them.

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Fix PR

When GitHub is connected and the agent identifies a code fix, a draft PR is opened in the relevant service repository. The PR link appears on the problem detail page. You review and merge the PR on your own timeline — sureops never auto-merges into your production codebase.

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Recurrence chains

When the same root cause triggers additional incidents after the first is closed, sureops creates new incidents and links them to the existing problem record as recurrence events. The chain grows over time:
The problem detail page shows the full chain. Each recurrence also updates the problem’s urgency signal — a problem that has recurred multiple times is surfaced prominently in the Recurrence Hotspots widget on the Command Center.
A resolved problem is never reopened when a recurrence is detected. Instead, sureops creates a new problem record linked to the original recurrence chain. This preserves the historical RCA and action-item record for every resolution attempt separately.

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Linking incidents to problems

When you view a closed incident in the Incident Hub, you can manually promote it to a problem using the Promote to problem button in the Collaboration Bar. This is useful when you spot a pattern before automatic detection fires. If sureops has already linked an incident to a problem record, a problem chip appears on the incident row in the Incidents list. Clicking it navigates directly to the problem detail page.

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Problem status lifecycle

Marking a problem resolved does not prevent a new problem from being opened if the same root cause recurs. The recurrence chain ensures historical context is never lost.

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Analytics

The Problems tab on the Analytics page shows aggregate problem-management health: aging and recurrence counts, detection source mix, proposed monitors added, and alert intelligence. See Analytics for details.