“Recurring Ticket Patterns: Category and Issue Type Breakdown”
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Recurring Ticket Patterns: Category and Issue Type Breakdown

Which ticket categories keep coming back, how much time they consume, and where automation or root cause fixes would have the highest impact. Generated by AI via Proxuma Power BI MCP server.

Built from: Autotask PSA
How this report was made
1
Autotask PSA
Multiple data sources combined
2
Proxuma Power BI
Pre-built MSP semantic model, 50+ measures
3
AI via MCP
Claude or ChatGPT writes DAX queries, executes them, formats output
4
This Report
KPIs, breakdowns, trends, recommendations
Ready in < 15 min

Recurring Ticket Patterns: Category and Issue Type Breakdown

Which ticket categories keep coming back, how much time they consume, and where automation or root cause fixes would have the highest impact. Generated by AI via Proxuma Power BI MCP server.

The data covers the full scope of Autotask PSA records relevant to this analysis, broken down by the key dimensions your team needs for day-to-day decisions and client reporting.

Who should use this: Service desk managers, dispatch leads, and operations teams

How often: Daily for queue management, weekly for trend analysis, monthly for capacity planning

Time saved
Manual ticket analysis requires exporting data and building pivot tables. This report does it automatically.
Queue health
Stuck tickets, aging backlogs, and escalation patterns become visible at a glance.
Process improvement
Data-driven decisions about routing, staffing, and escalation rules.
Report categoryTicketing & Helpdesk
Data sourceAutotask PSA · Datto RMM · Datto Backup · Microsoft 365 · SmileBack · HubSpot · IT Glue
RefreshReal-time via Power BI
Generation timeUnder 15 minutes
AI requiredClaude, ChatGPT or Copilot
AudienceService desk managers, dispatch leads
Where to find this in Proxuma
Power BI › Ticketing › Recurring Ticket Patterns: Category a...
What you can measure in this report
Summary Metrics
Most Recurring Ticket Categories — Ranked by Volume
Issue Type Patterns — Second-Level Breakdown
Cost of Recurring Work — Hours Consumed by Top Categories
Findings
What Should You Do With This Data?
Frequently Asked Questions
Total Tickets
Top Category
Categories
Avg Hours / Ticket
AI-Generated Power BI Report
Recurring Ticket Patterns:
Category and Issue Type Breakdown

Which ticket categories keep coming back, how much time they consume, and where automation or root cause fixes would have the highest impact. Generated by AI via Proxuma Power BI MCP server.

Demo Report: This report uses synthetic data to demonstrate AI-generated insights from Proxuma Power BI. The structure, DAX queries, and analysis reflect real MSP data patterns.
1.0 Summary Metrics
Total Tickets
67,521
Across all categories
Top Category
27,955
41.4% of all tickets
Categories
7
With significant volume
Avg Hours / Ticket
0.92h
Across all categories
View DAX Query — Summary Metrics
EVALUATE
ROW(
    "TotalTickets", COUNTROWS('BI_Autotask_Tickets'),
    "TopCategoryVolume", MAXX(
        ADDCOLUMNS(
            VALUES('BI_Autotask_Tickets'[ticket_category_name]),
            "cnt", CALCULATE(COUNTROWS('BI_Autotask_Tickets'))
        ), [cnt]),
    "CategoryCount", DISTINCTCOUNT('BI_Autotask_Tickets'[ticket_category_name]),
    "AvgHours", AVERAGE('BI_Autotask_Tickets'[worked_hours])
)
What are these DAX queries? DAX (Data Analysis Expressions) is the formula language used by Power BI to query data. Each “View DAX Query” section shows the exact query the AI wrote and executed. You can copy any query and run it in Power BI Desktop against your own dataset.
2.0 Most Recurring Ticket Categories — Ranked by Volume

All ticket categories ranked from highest to lowest volume, with average hours per ticket and share of total

CategoryIssue TypeCount
Airline pilotGeneral practice doctor13,313
Research scientistEducation officer, community11,458
Product managerTherapist, speech and language9,697
Research scientistPublic librarian6,062
Product managerFinancial risk analyst4,026
Research scientist
27,955
41.4%
Product manager
16,578
24.6%
Airline pilot
19.7%
Oceanographer
3,113
4.6%
Naval architect
2.6%
Local govt officer
2.5%
Chartered acct
2.0%
View DAX Query — Recurring Categories Ranked
EVALUATE TOPN(15, SUMMARIZECOLUMNS('BI_Autotask_Tickets'[ticket_category_name], 'BI_Autotask_Tickets'[issue_type_name], "TicketCount", COUNTROWS('BI_Autotask_Tickets')), [TicketCount], DESC)
3.0 Issue Type Patterns — Second-Level Breakdown

Issue types and sub-issue types ranked by ticket volume, showing where the repeat work concentrates at a more granular level

Top Issue Types
#Issue TypeTicketsAvg HoursVolume Level
1General practice doctor15,8350.45hVery High
2Development officer11,7570.78hVery High
3Therapist9,8660.68hHigh
4Public librarian6,1170.71hHigh
Top Sub-Issue Types
#Sub-Issue TypeTicketsPattern
1Furniture conservator4,318Recurring
2Teacher, secondary school3,338Recurring
3Insurance claims handler3,204Recurring
Ticket Type Distribution
All tickets
Incident 41%
Alert 29%
SR 19%
CR 11%
Incident (27,664) Alert (19,790) Service Request (12,653) Change Request (7,247) Problem (167)
View DAX Query — Issue Type and Ticket Type Breakdown
-- Issue types by volume
EVALUATE
TOPN(
    10,
    ADDCOLUMNS(
        VALUES('BI_Autotask_Tickets'[issue_type_name]),
        "tickets", CALCULATE(COUNTROWS('BI_Autotask_Tickets')),
        "avg_hours", CALCULATE(AVERAGE('BI_Autotask_Tickets'[worked_hours]))
    ),
    [tickets], DESC
)

-- Ticket type distribution
EVALUATE
ADDCOLUMNS(
    VALUES('BI_Autotask_Tickets'[ticket_type_name]),
    "tickets", CALCULATE(COUNTROWS('BI_Autotask_Tickets'))
)
ORDER BY [tickets] DESC
4.0 Cost of Recurring Work — Hours Consumed by Top Categories

Total engineer hours consumed by the highest-volume categories, showing the real operational cost of repeat tickets

CategoryTicketsAvg HoursTotal HoursHours Impact
Research scientist (life sciences) 27,955 0.81h 22,644h Highest
Product manager 16,578 0.88h 14,589h Very High
Airline pilot 13,316 0.43h 5,726h High
What does this mean? The top three categories alone consume an estimated 42,959 engineer hours. At a blended rate of $75/hour, that is roughly $3.2M in labor cost on repeat work. Even a 10% reduction through automation or root cause fixes saves over $320K annually.
Research scientist
22,644h
Product manager
14,589h
Airline pilot
Local govt officer
4,480h
Chartered acct
2,958h
View DAX Query — Hours per Category
EVALUATE
TOPN(
    10,
    ADDCOLUMNS(
        VALUES('BI_Autotask_Tickets'[ticket_category_name]),
        "tickets", CALCULATE(COUNTROWS('BI_Autotask_Tickets')),
        "avg_hours", CALCULATE(AVERAGE('BI_Autotask_Tickets'[worked_hours])),
        "total_hours", CALCULATE(SUM('BI_Autotask_Tickets'[worked_hours]))
    ),
    [total_hours], DESC
)
5.0 Findings

One category dominates: Research scientist (life sciences) accounts for 41.4% of all tickets at 27,955 entries. That is not a busy category. That is a structural pattern. With an average of 0.81 hours per ticket, these are not complex issues either. They are repetitive, predictable, and exactly the kind of work that should be reduced through better tooling or self-service options.

The top three categories together make up 85.7% of all ticket volume. Everything else is noise by comparison. If you want to move the needle on service desk efficiency, these three categories are where to focus.

Airline pilot stands out for a different reason. It has the third-highest volume (13,316 tickets) but the lowest average hours (0.43h). These tickets are being resolved quickly, which suggests they may be alerts or automated entries rather than real user requests. A large portion of these are likely candidates for auto-resolution or suppression.

On the other end, Local government officer and Accountant, chartered have relatively low volume but high average hours (2.62h and 2.18h respectively). These are the expensive tickets. Each one takes more than twice the time of the average ticket. Reducing volume in these categories would free up significant engineer time even though they represent only 4.5% of total tickets.

The ticket type breakdown shows that incidents make up 41% and alerts 29%. The alert volume is worth investigating. Nearly 20,000 alert tickets suggests either noisy monitoring or a threshold configuration that needs tuning. Every unnecessary alert consumes triage time.

6.0 What Should You Do With This Data?

5 priorities based on the findings above

1

Investigate the top category for automation opportunities

Research scientist (life sciences) generates 27,955 tickets at 0.81h each. Pull a sample of 50 recent tickets in this category and look for patterns. If 60% or more follow the same resolution steps, build a runbook or script for it. Even partial automation at this volume saves thousands of hours.

2

Audit the alert volume and tune monitoring thresholds

19,790 alert tickets is a red flag. Review your RMM and monitoring tool configurations. Identify which alerts are actionable versus informational. Suppressing or auto-closing alerts that resolve themselves could remove thousands of tickets from your queue without any risk to service quality.

3

Build self-service for the Airline pilot category

With 13,316 tickets and only 0.43h average resolution, these are quick-fix issues. A knowledge base article, a guided troubleshooting flow, or a self-service portal entry could deflect a meaningful percentage of these. The goal is not to eliminate them, but to shift 20-30% to self-service.

4

Root cause the high-hours categories

Local government officer (2.62h avg) and Accountant, chartered (2.18h avg) are consuming disproportionate time. These 3,067 tickets together account for roughly 7,438 engineer hours. Look for recurring sub-issues within these categories. A single root cause fix here could reduce average resolution time by 30-50%.

5

Track these metrics monthly to measure progress

Set up a recurring report or Power BI dashboard page that shows the top 10 categories by volume each month. After implementing automation or root cause fixes, you should see the volume and hours trend downward. If a category stays flat, the fix did not work and needs revisiting.

7.0 Frequently Asked Questions
Where does the ticket data come from?

All ticket data comes from Autotask PSA via the Proxuma Power BI connector. The semantic model includes ticket categories, issue types, sub-issue types, worked hours, and ticket types. The AI queries this model using DAX and groups the results by category to identify recurring patterns.

What counts as a "recurring" ticket?

This report groups tickets by category and issue type, then ranks by volume. A "recurring" pattern is any category that appears with high frequency. The report does not track individual ticket re-opens. Instead, it surfaces categories where the same type of work keeps appearing, which is a stronger signal of a systemic issue.

Why are the category names unusual?

This demo report uses synthetic data generated by a faker library. In production, these category names would be your actual Autotask ticket categories like "Password Reset", "Email Issue", "VPN Connectivity", or whatever your PSA is configured to track.

How do I reduce recurring ticket volume?

Three approaches work: (1) Automation via scripting or RMM policies for tickets with predictable resolution steps. (2) Self-service portals or knowledge base articles for user-fixable issues. (3) Root cause analysis for categories where a single infrastructure or configuration fix eliminates the trigger entirely.

Can I filter this report by client or time period?

Yes. Add a filter to the DAX queries for BI_Autotask_Tickets[company_name] to see recurring patterns per client, or filter on BI_Autotask_Tickets[create_date] to limit to a specific time range. Per-client analysis is useful for QBRs and identifying client-specific issues.

Can I run this report against my own data?

Yes. Connect Proxuma Power BI to your Autotask PSA, add an AI tool (Claude, ChatGPT, or Copilot) via MCP, and ask the same question. The AI writes the DAX queries, runs them against your real data, and produces a report like this in under fifteen minutes.

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