Work through an investigation inside the system instead of attaching a finished PDF to it.

Pick a method — 5 Whys, fishbone/Ishikawa — and the system prompts for each step, asking the questions an investigator should be asking as they go. The completed analysis stays structured and linked to the deviation or CAPA it belongs to, so it can be reviewed, trended and shown to an auditor as a record rather than as a document.

Why this matters: quality managers tell us the people who actually run an RCA often are not quality-trained. When the form is unstructured, the investigation happens in a spreadsheet or a Word file and only the conclusion gets uploaded — which turns a quality system into a filing cabinet and makes recurrence analysis impossible.

This is distinct from AI-drafted investigations (see "AI-assisted deviation intake"). The guided workflow is the method scaffold; AI assistance is optional help inside it. Human sign-off always required.

Requested by a GACP-licensed cultivator moving toward GMP, and echoed by GMP quality consultants.