Linking an external customers Jira account to company internal

[beccasolomonsmith]

I am in the process of setting up a service management project and have a very specific external customer in mind with this question. I have tried testing this out and am not sure if what I want to do is even possible.

Client X uses Jira for logging their own internal issues. In some of their projects, they have automation set up to email whoever the vendor is for that project. Meaning, for my company, an email gets sent directly to our support email (our current process). This is great for when we change as well as this will automatically create a ticket for us in service management. However, the reply will go to the customers Jira automation email (the sender) instead of a real person. 

What we are trying to avoid is both parties needing to log in to multiple Jira instances to manage issues. Our current workflow looks like this:

• Customer logs issue in their Jira project
• Jira automation sends email with issue details
• Receive email request
• Manually log issue
• Reply to email with reference number (there are real people email addresses in the cc field)
• Customer provides their reference number
• We are able to log in to the customers Jira project to update, ask question, etc but they cannot log in to ours
• We manage both internal and external comments in 2 Jira instances
• Customer closed their internal issue when complete

What we would like the workflow to look like:

• Customer logs issue in their Jira project
• Jira automation sends email with issue details
• Service Management creates internal issue
• We can create an external comment on internal issue which will add the comment to customers issue in their Jira project

This would prevent either party needing to manage 2 Jira instances

If I understand what I am seeing, the workflow will be more like this for the customer

• Customer either logs issue manually in the portal or emails the support email
• Issue is logged automatically for us
• We update our issue which the customer would need to log in to the portal or read emails for updates and update their own internal issue manually

So us as the vendor would benefit by no longer managing the customers issues externally, but the customer would now need to log in to 2 Jira instances (portal and their own instance) to manage their issues.

Am I missing something or is this just not possible to do? 

[Syed Majid Hassan -Exalate- · Accepted solution]

Hi,

Have you considered getting rid of the email stuff altogether and synchronize your Jira instance with that of the Customer? That would certainly reduce the manual work, avoid the multiple logins issue and sync comments/fields across both systems. 

I work with one such synchronization solution called Exalate, and your use case fits perfectly here. If you are interested in seeing a personalized demo, please feel free to book a slot here. 

Thanks

Majid

[Diana_Architect_ZigiWave]

@beccasolomonsmith hi & welcome to the community! Wouldn't it be easier to simply connect the Jira instances to automate tasks and keep them in sync at all times? If you're open to external help (a 3rd party solution) - check out ZigiOps. It's 100% no-code, fully customizable (you can tweak it to fit various use cases), offers a bi-directional connection & does not store any of your data. Check the zigiops connector and if you want to see it in action, feel free to book a demo.

Diana (ZigiOps team)