How to add a service desk customer into a Jira Software project ?

Question

I am using Jira Service Desk free and Jira Software free. If it simplifies anything I don't mind switching to some basic plan on one or both products depending on how much it costs overall.

So a customer sends in many smaller and larger requestins in Desk. Some larger ones involve a larger project and I want to manage it in Jira Software to be able to have sprints and breakdowns and task dependencies and so on. I want the customer to be able to see the sprint reports, backlog and be able to have direct communications with the client as task comments, sharing documents directly on issues, etc.

If I go to the Jira Software project settings, there is a People section where you can invite people and in the filter dropdown there is "Service Desk Customers" but whenever I try searching for any customer, no results show. What am I doing wrong?

John Funk · Answer

Hi Daniel,

The short answer is no, JSM/JSD customers cannot see any project issues except for JSM/JSD projects.

Walter Buggenhout · Answer

Your customer needs product access to Jira Software (and - as such - a license) before he can be granted access to your projects.

You'll need to set up in your site Administration / User Management / product access for that user.

Jack Brickey · Answer

Customers will not have access to the applications and therefore cannot see things like reports. If you want to give a customer access then you would need to migrate them to a licensed user but be cautious here since, beyond the cost, do you really want them to be a user in your instance? If you do then go for it. What you can do is to give them access and then control what they can see and do using permissions.