ITSM Projects & Portal Configuration | ACP-420
This week we’re digging into how to configure Jira Service Management (JSM) to support ITSM (IT Service Management) and how to configure the customer Portal.
Whats ITSM?
At a high level ITSM is how information technology teams set themselves up to support their customers. This includes everything from determining what processes they need to use, to how they’ll setup Jira to what types of tickets they’ll take to what SLA’s they’ll have. I find this to be one of the more common use-cases for Jira, although groups may not call it “ITSM”.
The Portal
Each Jira Service Management project has a portal that allows customers to put in tickets. Typically this portal is only available for internal customers via a specific link - but can be exposed to external customers as well. The portal contains request types, which may be put into groups. For example anything related to requesting or fixing hardware could be found under a “Hardware” group (note that request types can be added to multiple groups!).
Portals can be grouped into Help Desks. By default every instance has a single help desk which contains every portal, however, you can create additional help desks as needed. The help desk is intended to be the one place everyone knows to go to when they need help as typing something into its search bar will bring up things like:
Confluence content that related to the search
Portals that relate to the search
Specific request types that relate to the search
It’s important to keep in mind that the help desk’s ability to search is limited by how well the underlying content/information is setup. For example, if your Confluence space it’s structures well and articles don’t have relevant titles customers won’t find content easily.
Both portals and help desks can be branded (the first by project admins, the second by Jira admins). THis is something I highly recommend doing for every portal as aligning the look and feel with your corporate brand makes it easier for folks to use it (after all if they find a portal that has different logos and colours than they’re used to they may think they’re in the wrong spot).
Portals and help desks can also have announcements - basically a banner at the top that can be used to share information. Common examples include information on system outages, company events and other information that everyone should know. Project admins and Jira admins can edit announcements on the Portal and help desk, and you can optionally allow agents to update announcements at the portal level. Note you can’t specify which agent, any agent will be able to do this.
ITSM Support
The first thing any group should do when using Jira Service Management to support ITSM is to ensure they understand their internal processes and policies. Failing to do this will result in a setup in Jira Service Management that doesn’t quite fit - and will need to be rebuilt. Once that work is out of the way, however, Jira provides a number of features to support ITSM.
Request Types & Forms
Request types allow teams to tailor intake to specific things. Many IT teams will have a (relatively) fixed menu of what they support, which can be expressed as various request types. Depending on the teams need, these request types can be restricted (e.g. only VPs and above can use the “Executive Help” request type), or tweak to fit specific groups.
Forms allow groups to collect additional information on request types - and they don’t require a Jira admin to setup. They also offer a number of formatting features (similar to Confluence pages) which enable teams to create more appealing looking forms to solicit information. Forms can also be filled in after a ticket is submitted, allowing agents to collect additional information as the process continues.
One practical thing to be aware is that forms do not auto-expand on tickets. This means that when an agent opens a ticket, they won’t see the entire form. Instead they’ll get a line indicating there is a form that they’ll have to click on to use.
Notifications
Notifications are sent by Jira around specific events, for example, when a ticket is created. There are a number of default notifications that let folks know what is going on, however, it is always worth the time to take a look at them and adjust them as needed. This could include changing the terminology used to match your organization’s guidelines, or even adjusting the template (with HTML and CSS) to match your branding.
This seems like a small thing, but having tailored communications can have a huge impact on your customers, and their perception of your team.
Conclusion
The Portal is likely the first thing your customers interact with when using Jira Service Management - so make time to tailor it to your needs. Additionally, take time with your team to understand what they need to do, and what processes they need before you start setting up Jira Service Management and you’ll save yourself a lot of headache!
Check out the video below and hope to see you in a session soon!
