Calling JSM admins: what approval / sign-off edge cases should I be testing for?

[#1]

Hi all,

Quick bit of honesty up front: I'm a heavy Jira Software user, but I've had limited hands-on time in JSM day to day, so I'm hoping to tap the real-world JSM expertise in this group.

I'm working on validating an approval / business sign-off capability against real-world Jira Service Management setups, and the practitioners here know the edge cases far better than I do.

For those who handle approvals or formal sign-offs in JSM today, I'd really value your take on where things get tricky:

• Agent vs. customer roles: how do you handle approvals when the approver is a customer/portal user rather than a licensed agent?
• Portal permissions: any gotchas with what portal users can and can't see or act on?
• Request types and workflows: which request types most often need a formal sign-off step, and how do you model it today?
• Audit and compliance: what do your auditors actually ask for (SOC 2 / SOX / internal), and where does native JSM fall short?

Disclosure:

I'm an independent Marketplace vendor (Cahaba Forge). I built a Forge app, Business Sign-off & Approval for Jira, that adds audit-ready approvals directly in the issue panel. It runs great on Jira Software, and it technically runs on JSM too, but before I officially tag it JSM-compatible on the listing I want to make sure it holds up in real JSM environments, not just my test site.

If anyone is willing to try it on a real JSM instance and share candid feedback, I'm happy to provide an extended free license for your site. And even if you don't want to test anything, your answers to the questions above would genuinely help me build the right thing.

App listing for context: https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/1071447603/business-sign-off-approval-for-jira?hosting=cloud&tab=overview

Thanks in advance for any insight!

Jim

Cahaba Forge

[Natasja Eloff]

For JSM, I think the customer notifications helps with the Agent vs Customer role. Everyone that needs to approve the request will receive the notification.
This has the "View Request" button at the bottom of the email, that opens the Portal page with the request. and they can decided to either approve from the email notifications or click on the button to approve on the portal side.
I think the Agent can choose where they want to approve the request, either in the Portal or the Agent UI, it's up to them.

I do feel that the Customer Notification lacks the ability to add more detail.
Like custom fields, because this notification is for ALL approval requests. If you want to customize the notification, you need to switch this off and create a automation.
I have implemented a work-a-round where the details are copied to the description and this is then populated on the approval notification. But not everyone want's the field details again in the description.

I normally use the out of the box Service request with Approval. Or create a new Work Item.

Not really up to date with Audit requirements. but what I do know is they ask for the time-stamp of when this was approve. I have created a automation that captures this on a field named approval time-stamp. The data is captured on the request, but under Approvals and it's a bit difficult to get this in a filter.