An approach is presented for identifying related problem tickets in an information technology (IT) environment. User interactions with a computer program are stored. The user interactions include inputs to the computer program to search for problem tickets issued in the IT environment that have the same characteristics. One or more user interaction patterns within the user interactions are recognized. A user interaction pattern of the one or more user interaction patterns is selected based on an evaluation of effectiveness of each of the one or more user interaction patterns. Based on the user interaction pattern, a rule is generated for determining which problem tickets in the IT environment share a common characteristic. The rule is applied to additional problem tickets issued in the IT environment to identify which of the additional problem tickets share the common characteristic.