Jira Service Management Design Structure: How IT Streamlines and Simplifies Support

One of the more compelling reasons to use Jira Service Management (JSM) is to take advantage of its request management and service desk functionality. JSM is designed to streamline both the fulfillment and intake of requests, across all teams.

JSM works to remove the frustration of having to manage requests from multiple sources through multiple channels, increasing overall efficiency by automating repetitive tasks. Teams can even measure their performance with JSM, tracking how many total requests come in, and how long it takes to resolve those requests. 

JSM clearly simplifies the process of streamlining service support, but what does the process actually look like? How are support requests so easily managed? To understand that, you’ll need to understand the JSM design structure.

Understanding JSM

At its core, JSM was designed to be a highly customizable tool. Atlassian understands that service delivery teams can often have unique needs, particularly when it comes to communication.

JSM functions as a singular place where team members can go for help. By using a centralized customer portal, both employees and customers can quickly access every service desk across an organization.

On the receiving end, service request management projects come with request types and workflows that are easy to review and edit. They also come with:

• Flexible Service Level Agreement Settings
• Customizable Queues
• Automated Request Management
• Email Channels 
• Adjustable Notifications
• Real-Time Reporting Capabilities

How Service Request Management Works With Jira Service Management

Before we dive into the actual process, it’s important to understand a few key elements of the JSM design. 

Let’s imagine that the customer/team member has a problem they need support with. They would start by accessing their customer portal and submitting a support ticket. The user that interacts with the customer portal is defined as a “customer” and does not require an Atlassian JSM license in order to access that portal.  

Support tickets within the customer portal are batched into specific portal groups. For example, you might have one portal group specifically for hardware which would include any hardware-related requests.  This way, the customer/team member can continue to find more granular tickets under those options. 

While tickets are placed in a particular portal group, the tickets themselves are not locked to a certain portal group exclusively. Some tickets may belong in multiple portal groups, and JSM accounts can account for this requirement. 

Within each portal group are the request types.  Request types are the actual tickets that a customer will fill out.  A few examples of request types for an IT Service Desk would be: locked account, new hardware request, new software request, software outage, etc. Once the request type is entered, the request goes into JSM, which is what the internal user (or agent) will interact with the ticket.  

Internal users of JSM are referred to as agents within Atlassian.  Agents are often members of service teams that perform the actual work for the tickets to be resolved.  These users require an Atlassian JSM license in order to view and move tickets through the workflow.  

The agent receives the request type as an issue type, and it’s worth noting that you can have multiple request types linked to one issue type. For example, the agent you may have multiple different request types (software outage, server issue, security vulnerability,etc.) that link to one issue type of incident. 

Simply by looking at the design, you can begin to say what makes JSM such a useful tool to both customers/team members and agents. Customers/team members are able to interact with a customer portal designed to simplify the support ticket submission process. Agents, instead of having to sift through a variety of different channels and sources, are able to quickly and easily sort by request type and address problems efficiently.

The Power Of Automation And The Overall Utility Of Jira Service Management

When your teams are supported properly, they’re able to waste less time fixing what’s broken and more time on the tasks that matter. Likewise, when your support team has a simplified support process, they can address problems much more quickly and help keep your teams moving forward.

Now that we understand a bit more about how JSM was designed, it’s time to find ways to improve the experience for all your teams. That’s why one of the first action items you’ll want to focus on is finding ways to implement smart automation. 

When you’re able to properly incorporate automation into your service request experience, you’ll be able to reduce the frustration of dealing with common, repetitive tasks for your service team. 

A great example would be using automation to help agents quickly move through their follow-up communications. Not only will this improve the way your support team can communicate with customers and employees, but it will also help improve estimated resolution times.

This is what JSM does best, making support simple for the customers/team members and making it efficient for agents. By building a distinct work stream for service requests, your business can use JSM to help your teams focus on delivering more valuable work. By standardizing the process, you’re able to increase both overall efficiency and service quality. 

As an Atlassian Platinum Solution Partner, Praecipio understands what it takes to get the best results from your JSM deployment. Our experts are ready to evaluate your existing processes and get you started with JSM quickly. Plus, we’ll standardize and optimize your JSM implementation on day one, so you start getting great results as soon as possible.

Contact us and we will help Jira Service Management work for every aspect of your business.