Tracking Time vs Customer Entitlement

Question

We're about to go live with JSM for managing our support desk but there's one piece of functionality lacking out of the box that I can't find a solution to and I'm wondering what methods others have used as a workaround.

In summary, we sell support packages in two ways; either as a set number of hours per month on a retainer basis (method A), or bulk packages of say 12 hours at a time that rolls forward until fully used up (method B) .

At the end of each month I then need to report for each scenario, either to charge the client for hours used over and above their monthly allowance (method A), or issue renewals to those who have run out of support hours (method B) .

Our support agents can log their time in JSM as you would expect, but there doesn't seem to be any functionality to introduce an 'allowance' to benchmark this against per client.

I'm sure this is a very common way of selling support services, so would be interested to discover how other users have managed this aspect of their business when using JSM?

Wojciech Wardaszko_p20bth · Answer

Thanks for the update!

I'm glad to see that there's a solution for you, even if it's not fully there yet.

I'd greatly appreciate all feedback you can share regarding Clockwork Pro as we're striving to always improve our products.

For context, Clockwork is in very active development, and being a Connect app it does not have the limitations Forge apps currently face, so if the currently implemented solution does not cut it for you, maybe we'll be able to provide some guidance on how to make this work with Clockwork as it is or even develop and deploy some features.

No pressure here, but if you were ever to find the time, please share the feedback here or via our customer service portal.

Cheers!

Colin Porter · Answer

Thanks Wojciech,

I had actually checked out Clockwork Pro but it wasn't quite what we required.

I've actually found an app for just what I need, https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/1228498/support-contract-jsm-9e9acd44-46e1-48d1-8466-a07544d57455?hosting=cloud&tab=reviews but it's in it's very early stages and needs some improvements.

Thanks again!

Wojciech Wardaszko_p20bth · Answer

Hi @Colin Porter

Welcome to the Community!

I'm afraid that for your needs out-of-the-box Jira will not be enough - at least I don't have a good idea of how to approach this without resorting to an app.

If using an app is an option, I can honestly recommend our Clockwork Pro. It allows you to add custom worklog attributes, so you could add a worklog label to differentiate between the two types of customers. Using these attributes as basis for Timesheet breakdown will let you see how much time was tracked in each category and what is the correct next step depending on the scenario.

I'm not offering you a way to automate every step of the process as this is a very specific use case that's not supported by our app in full, but I'm pretty certain that our app can actually enable you to solve your problem.

If you'd like to discuss this idea further, please feel free to contact our support team so we can work on a setup matching your needs together.

Cheers!