Hi Frank, I'll try to give a little more detail.

For instance, in my job, I respond to a lot of international tenders. Now, these all have slightly different requirements, but the process I follow is largely the same due to our ISO processes. So, one of the things I've started doing when I open every file is adding a standard checklist.

This checklist has a list of the common actions (such as received tender, received prices from so-and-so, etc.) and areas to date when they've happened. Now, I was thinking of something similar, but to ensure that they've got a notes portion.

So it would be something like

Ticket #:
Date Opened:
Issue Summary:

Researched Solution 1: (Date and Notes)
Communicated Solution 1 with Customer: (Date and Notes)
Feedback on Solution 1: (Successful/Unsuccessful and why)
If unsuccessful, cycle through the Research/Test/Communicate/Feedback loop, a few more times, adding notes as necessary. Now, these notes might live in the issue management system, I don't know how its set up. If so, then this can just be a checklist to track where you're at and what's up next.

You could do this on paper, in Excel, in pretty much anything. If you wanted to make it easier to see everything at a glance, find a way to just use bar graphs and colours, (similar to a lean manufacturing tool, being able to see all your status items easily in a visual manner).

I hope this helps clarify a bit more if not, please let me know and I'll try to take it more detailed!

Cheers,

Adam