How can workers respond to customers from sub-tasks in Jira Service Desk?

Question

Hi!  We have Jira Service Desk set up to automatically create a sub-task when a customer request is raised via the portal.  Sub-tasks are used by the internal teams to record all the different activities required to be undertaken to resolve an issue.  When the sub-task is created, the reporter name (the customer) is copied from the parent into the sub-task (along with various other fields).

When our internal workers start working on the sub-task, the comments fields gives them the ability to "share with customer" or "comment internally", however neither of these result in the customer being notified of the comment.  This causes a problem in terms of opening up a pathway for customers and workers to communicate with one another.  If the comment is made on the parent, then everything works as it should.

My questions are:

1) Is there a setting or something I am missing that will allow communication with the customer via a sub-task; or

2) Is there something I can do using JSU Automation / Automation for Jira to copy the comment from the sub-task to the parent and facilitate communication that way?

3) Any other suggestions?

Please note we don't have the ability to purchase additional plug-ins or use script runner.

Steven Moore_x17q9a · Answer

I agree with "niggles20", in a subtask, there is an option to "reply to customer".  This is misleading, the reply never reaches the customer.

As I see a subtask, it is a way to divide a request into multiple issues, then assign specific team members an issue they are best able to solve.  They should be able to interact with the customer.

I hope a fresh set of eyes will look at this.

niggles20 · Answer

Thanks for the reply.  It seems strange that the sub-task has an option to "share with customer" if it is fundamentally incapable of doing so!

Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Answer

Customers do not interact with issues, their interface is purely on Requests.  Jira uses issues to provide the back-end of requests.

Sub-tasks cannot be mapped on to requests.  This is because sub-tasks live within the context of a parent issue, which you don't have with requests.

The only way to do what you want is to copy comments and other data up to the parent issue.  I don't think Automation can do that, you're going to need one of the other scripting apps.