Include external 1st level support on Jira Service Desk

[David Jung]

Hi all,

My company is using Jira for product development and we are now planning to extend it's usage to implement a Ticketing system for customer support as well. I am pretty sure already how I want to set that up, but came across a new use-case recently for which I feel very unsure if Jira would support it:

Our clients are lager enterprises which usually have their own IT support department internally. They have requested us to include them on the ticketing workflow so that:

- Ticket gets raised by user
- External support team has a look at it
- External support team either works on the ticket or escalates
- If escalated, our internal support team picks it up
- We work on it

Overall, it sounds to me like they would want to become users in our Ticketing system, but obviously our system would hold tickets related to other clients as well which the external users should not have access to.

Is that something that Jira would be able to support? What would be the best ways of setting this workflow up?

Thanks,
David

[Jack Brickey · Accepted solution]

Two ideas…Assuming the company is using JSM 

• have the company setup your team as JSM users. If they need to limit what your team sees then set up separate project
• have the company setup automation in their JSM project. When issue is escalated send email to your Jira project to create an issue. You will need to work out how to close the loop with the issue in their JSM project. 

[Gaurav · Accepted solution]

Hello @David Jung 

For this implementation, you will need to understand the ticketing system which your customer are making use of.

If they are using JSM, follow the suggestion shared by @Jack Brickey 

If not, then you will need to look at integrating that system with your JSM system. That way the ticket can be escalated from that system into your system. The business rule will govern which tickets are sent to your JSM system, the flow of comments, delays, holds or closure.

I know this is possible and have done this type of integration with SNOW and FreshDesk. But, this could be really tricky and challenging for some other systems.

[Daniel Ebers]

Hi @David Jung

not sure if I am getting the full use case right.
Assume you are the vendor of a product but you have a cooperation with a different company - this is what I understand so far at least.

They will need to open requests in your company's Jira Service Management but should not see requests from, let's say other cooperation partners or even customers.
Yes, that's possible like Jack described when using an own project for them, this comes with a separate portal also.

- Ticket gets raised by user

The previous said counts in case "raised by user" means a customer, or cooperation partner raises the request in _your_ Jira Service Management.

- External support team has a look at it
- External support team either works on the ticket or escalates

The previous said is valid this means the support team are people of your company OR of the cooperation partner. This is possible because users can share requests within their "Organization".

- If escalated, our internal support team picks it up
- We work on it

This all can be done if you (like you stated) also use Jira Software. Probably you want to use Automation to automate the process of creating a linked issue (in terms of an escalated request / something that needs attention from a developer).

In a summary - the use case (if understood well) is suited for being used with Jira Service Management.

If I understood it correctly there is some discussion if the staff of the cooperation company should work on your Jira Service Management platform - as a "customer" (terms of Jira Service Management). This would be the easiest option in my opinion.
Like Gaurav said you could have several systems integrate and interact with each other which would require (probably a lot) engineering work upfront.

Please do let us know if something is missing from the answers so far.

Regards,
Daniel

[David Jung]

Thanks for you help. The topic evolved again and the answers provided did help me.

[David Jung]

Thanks for the quick answers @Gaurav & @Jack Brickey!

The problem is that the internal support team of this company has already said that they do not want to use their internal ticketing tool since "it takes to long to get through that" :D

If they stick to that the only option would be to bring them onto Jira as a user group with limit access, correct?