Communication third-party vendor from JSM

[Bart]

What are the recommendations for the following scenario?
An after-sales support team uses a JSM project to handle support cases submitted by customers. Often, the team needs to gather additional information from a third-party vendor.
Currently, this communication takes place via a (shared) email inbox. The downside of this approach is that the team has to monitor both the email inbox and the JSM project.
They would prefer to use a single tool for their work.

What would be the best way to enable this within JSM? The customer (requestor) should not receive any updates about the communication between the after-sales representative and the third-party vendor.

[Marc - Devoteam]

Hi @Bart 

I would suggest to extend your workflow with an extra status "Waiting for Vendor"

Adjust the workflow status on each request type that will use this workflow, name the status equal to a status the customer receives a notification for (naming the status equal will not sent a new notification).

Then have an automation ruler in place that will notify the vendor, this should be based on a field where the vendor contact would be set (user field).

Disable the default notification based on comment and create a custom rule for outgoing comments and incoming comments, add conditions to base what action should be done when a comment is incoming or outgoing.

[Rilwan Ahmed]

Hi @Bart ,

I have a workaround.

1. Create a new JSM project (Lets name it as "Vendor Support")
2. Create an automation rule in "After-sales" project to create a new ticket in "Vendor Support" when there is a new ticket and include required persons/teams in "Vendor Support" ticket. Also make sure the link between 2 tickets are created
3. Create a global automation (system settings --> automation) which will copy comment from "Vendor Support" to "After-sales" project. The rule will look as below and it will add internal comment making it not visible for Customers
   
   use smart value to copy comment as below
   
   Comment from parent issue {{triggerIssue.key}}:
   {{comment.body}}
   
   
   

Please note:
In my rule, Bug Tracking == Vendor Support
IT Help == After Sales. 

Screenshot in After Sales project will look as below

[Sebastian Krzewiński]

Hi @Bart 

Did you consider to use Collaborator feature or grant JSM agent licenses to your vendors?

Regards,
Seba

[Bart]

Hi @Sebastian Krzewiński 

These vendors do not have access to JSM, and this is also not preferred. So using the collaborator feature or giving them a license is no option.

Regards,
Bart