Need advice for building out a process in JSM

[John Izquierdo]

TL;DR what would be the best practice to building out a process/procedure for decommissioning hardware/servers in a JSM Space without over complicating and cluttering things up?

Our Systems Manager is requesting we setup a process/procedure require certain steps are taken to decommission hardware/servers before it can be closed.

Currently our JSM Space has the typical ITSM Work Types: Incident, Problem, Service Request, and Change Request. My thought was to do the following:

1. Add Sub-tasks to our list of available work types
2. Create a new Request type under Service Requests and name it "Decommissions"
3. Create an automation that creates sub-tasks of the list of things to do for the decommission
4. Update the Workflow for the Work Type Service Request that prevents transitions to Done if the Request Type is Decommissions and the sub-tasks haven't been marked as completed

The above solution I came up with seems a bit much and become an issue for future Jira Admins when troubleshooting potential problems in the future.

Is there a better way to accomplish this without Duct tapping it all together? Would Playbooks be a viable solution? How can we prevent transition to done before other tasks are completed.

Any and all help would be much appreciated.

Thanks!

[Olga Cheban _TitanApps_ · Accepted solution]

hi @John Izquierdo ! 

It, indeed, looks like using checklists would be a better solution here. However, I wouldn't go with the Checkbox field for this, as it's not exactly well-suited for this purpose, for many reasons. 

If you are open to trying third-party tools, I would recommend our solution, Smart Checklist for Jira. It allows you to add feature-rich checklists to your ticket in a separate section, right below the ticket description section. It also has native automation features and allows you to create reusable checklist templates.

So, for your case, you can:

1) Create a new request type, i.e., "Hardware Decommission"

2) List all decommission steps in a checklist and add it to your work item with the help of Smart Checklist

3) Mark the most essential steps (or even all steps) as Mandatory Items and add completion validation. As a result, the request can be moved to Done only when all the mandatory steps are completed

4) Save your Decommission Checklist as a standard template

5) In settings, specify that this checklist should be added automatically to all new work items with the "Hardware Decommission" request type. This can be done with Smart Checklist's native automation, so this won't consume your Jira Automation limits


Once done, everything will work automatically.

When a new request with the "Hardware Decommission" type is created, Smart Checklist will automatically add your Decommission Checklist to this ticket. The person working on the ticket won't be able to mark the ticket as Done until all the steps marked as mandatory are completed.


Here's an example of a checklist created with Smart Checklist for Jira:

Checklist items can be easily used instead of Subtasks. They can give you most of the functionality of Subtasks, plus some other useful features (such as checklist templates).

Smart Checklist allows you to tag responsible people, structure checklists with headers, add due dates, add expandable Detail sections for individual checklist items, and set custom statuses.

I hope this helps!
Please let me know if you have any questions

[John Izquierdo]

@Olga Cheban _TitanApps_ 

Thanks for the marketplace app recommendations and providing an overhead instructions on how to set this up. I'm taking a look at the app now and running it through our approval process to get it added to our sandbox environment for testing.

[Hari Krishna]

Hi @John Izquierdo 

If the goal is to make sure decommission steps are followed without cluttering JSM, the simplest and cleanest way is not to rely on lots of sub-tasks and heavy automation.

A better approach is to keep everything in one Service Request.

Create a request type like “Hardware / Server Decommission” under Service Requests.
Then add one checklist-style custom field (checkboxes) for the required steps — backup done, access removed, monitoring disabled, asset updated, etc.

Next, add one workflow validator on the Done/Closed transition that checks:
“All checklist items must be completed.”

This way:

No extra work types

No complex automations

No sub-task sprawl

Future admins can easily understand it

All steps are visible on a single ticket

Automation can still be used lightly (for example, to pre-fill the checklist or add a reminder comment), but it shouldn’t be the core enforcement.

Playbooks are fine for documentation and guidance, but they can’t enforce completion, so they shouldn’t be relied on for this use case.

[Marc -Devoteam-]

Hi @Hari Krishna 

This does require a 3rd party app for embedding checklists in the instance.

[John Izquierdo]

Hi, @Hari Krishna

It does seem like this would require a third-part app like @Marc -Devoteam- mentioned.

Jira checklist also only seem available for Software/Business spaces and now Service Management spaces.

@Olga Cheban _TitanApps_ provided an app recommendation that looks promising.

Thanks everyone for the help!