I need help enhancing communication for my customer projects.

[Kipngetich Cornelius]

Hello,

I am new to Jira, and here is what I have done so far: I created a Jira Service Management project with a customer portal where clients can view their requests. I have also set up SMTP mail for incoming and outgoing emails, and everything is working smoothly so far. This project is based on SLAs, functioning as a ticketing system where all tickets (mainly domain-related requests) should be resolved on time for my clients.

My issue now is with larger projects that may take 1 or 2 months and do not follow SLAs. I created one from the available templates, but I don't see internal notes or reply-to-customer fields. I need to be able to communicate with customers as we transition from one step to another. Additionally, within the project, when an issue is created, emails are not being sent to customers like they do with JSM requests.

Thanks. 

[Walter Buggenhout]

Hi @Kipngetich Cornelius,

You have - most likely - created a Jira project (not Jira Service Management) for your longer projects and these don't have a portal, nor visibility for your customers.

It is quite common for organizations to have a service desk portal available to capture requests from customers and - at the same time - have projects for work that is happening internally, and that is simply not meant to be public.

Obviously, a request that comes in from a customer through your service desk may be a trigger for bigger projects that you manage internally. A common approach is to keep the service desk ticket alive as a means to communicate with your customer, while the details of the implementation are managed internally.

The principles behind this are nicely captured in this product guide article on change management.

Hope this helps!