If the correlation engine identifies the event as an “exception”, it can trigger the system to open an Incident Record, Problem Record or a Request For Change.

Incident Record: When the correlation engine determines that a specific type or combination of events represents an incident, an Incident Record should be created. The Incident Record should contain as much information as possible, including links to the events concerned and if possible a completed diagnostic script.

Problem Record: It is possible (with some of the more sophisticated tools) to evaluate the impact of incidents and raise a Problem Record automatically (where this is warranted) to allow root-cause analysis to commence immediately.

Request For Change(RFC): In case the correlation engine determines that an appropriate response to an event is for something to be changed, a Request For Change should be raised for the same. A Request For Change can also be created by an incident or a problem that needs a change for resolving the event.

It is possible that a single incident may initiate any one or a combination of these three processes. For example, a non-critical server failure would be logged as an incident, but in case there is no workaround, a Problem Record will be created to determine the root cause and resolution and an RFC will be logged to relocate the workload onto an alternative server while the problem is resolved.