Issue Type change exposes internal statuses

[Ben Bowman]

We have limited the available Issue Types for our service desk to a single, general Issue Type with the expectation that once our internal team reviews the request, the Issue Type may change to a Bug, Feature Request, etc. The workflow built for our service desk has several statuses that are not intended to be seen by customers. We have selected different workflow statuses to be shown to customers. However, when the Issue Type is changed, the internally facing statuses are exposed for customers to see (for example, internally we want to see "Triage" but we want the customer to see "In progress"). Additionally, the fields that customers have filled with information, are removed from their view. When the Issue Type is changed back, the customer facing statuses are once again shown and the information in each item is once again viewable by the customer. Can someone direct me to the setting that would prevent this from happening? Thanks! 

[Ben Bowman · Accepted solution]

In an effort to resolve this, I updated the statuses in using the"Status name to show customer" (as described here https://support.atlassian.com/jira-service-desk-cloud/docs/customize-the-workflow-statuses-for-a-request-type/) for all of the issue types, not just the one that we expect customers to see. However, this did not resolve the problem.  

[Craig Haynal]

I think there is an assumed issue type to request type mapping for those workflow statuses to show correctly.  If you had a request type that maps to your other issue type and you changed both values then I think it would work and show the correct mappings.

For example, if I create an issue with the "Get IT Help" request type which has a "Service Request" issue type then move it to be an "Incident" issue type and change the request type to "Report a system problem" which has a set of workflow statuses set up, then it works as I expect with the customers seeing my custom workflow statuses.  If I only change the issue type without adjusting the request type, the customers see the Jira statuses.  

So to make this work, you will probably have to create some request types that pair with your other issue types so you can create workflow statuses for them.  I haven't found any built-in solution to hide particular request types from customers, but if you are on server or data center the Deviniti Extension for Jira Service Desk add-on allows you to limit request types to particular groups (for example an internal group) so your customers won't see them.  We've had good luck using it to create some IT-only request types.

[Ben Bowman]

@Craig Haynal , Thank you for taking the time to respond. I agree that you can designate a unique status for each Request Type/Issue Type combination. This does not appear to be the issue as I have confirmed the desired statuses for each Issue Type. 

We have more than one service desk instance and the issue I described is only apparent on one of them. To confirm, I actually made a different Request/Issue available on the service desk and created a new ticket. When I transitioned that ticket to another issue type, the same issue (described above) was repeated. 

Any other suggestions?

[Craig Haynal]

Are you also changing the request type when you transition the issue type?  There seems to be a strict mapping between the workflow statuses and the combination of the issue type and the request type.  As an example of the mappings I have defined as request types:

Issue Type + Request Type = Workflow Statuses
Incident + Report a system problem = Inc statuses (based on Incident)
Service Request + Ask for help = Help statuses (based on Service Request)
Service Request + New system = Order statuses (based on Service Request)

When my issues exactly match the combinations of issue type and request type the customers always see the matching workflow statuses (per above), but any of the following combinations of issue type and request type will result in the customer seeing the internal workflow's statuses:

Incident + Ask for help = default Incident workflow statuses
Incident + Report a system problem = default Service Request workflow statuses
Service Request + Report a system problem = default Service Request workflow statues

The ideal would be for it to make it impossible to select these combinations, but I haven't found a good way to prevent agents from picking invalid combinations so far.

I'm not aware of any other situations that would prevent the desired statuses from showing.  Hopefully someone else can chime in if this doesn't apply in your situation.

[Ben Bowman]

@Craig Haynal Thank you! You were correct about the mapping. I misunderstood your message initially and spent a long time trying to figure out how to correct our configuration in the Request types and Issue types sections of the Project settings. Perhaps there is a way that I am still missing.

However, I was able to solve this by manually changing both the Issue Type and the Request Type as you described. (When the service desk item is open in Jira, The Request Type is on the bottom right in the "Service Desk request" section of the classic view. When the Request type is incorrect, "No match" is shown in red with a question mark as shown below.)

If someone can identify a setting that I am missing, please chime in. Thanks!