Adding SLAs from Service Desk to JIRA Software Project

Pavel Antonenko

Hi!

We have a really big and high load project using Cloud JIRA Software - with Kanban board looks like

Lenses Board - Agile Board - Looksery 2016-12-12 19-55-03.png

Now we want to add kind of SLAs to it, to track by time how tickets move through statuses.

I started JIRA Service Desk trial. Is any way to add SLAs except change time of project from Software to Service Desk? Will this action change anything except adding extra features?

After testing with changing project type I see that Request participants/Organizations are added, Comments UI is slightly changes, links to Kanban board is hidden from sidebar. We'd really prefer avoid any changes for all usual users.

Do anybody have experience to adding JIRA Service desk features to a big existing JIRA Software project? Any tips will be appreciated!

Lenses Board - Agile Board - Looksery 2016-12-12 19-55-03.png

Walter Buggenhout

Hi Pavel,

JIRA Software and JIRA Service Desk are two different applications serving different goals. Without going into all the nifty details, both are built on the JIRA platform (which gives you projects, issues, versions, components, workflow and a lot of other common things), but JIRA Software essentially aims at supporting a software development process whereas JIRA Service Desk is intended for Service Management either by IT or other Service Teams.

You noticed correctly that the UI between both types of projects is different. Service Desk offers you SLA's, queues to manage issues, specific reports and automation rules. JIRA Software offers you scrum and kanban boards, integration with dev tools, a release hub and so on.

On top of that, there is also quite an important difference in licensing. You can find some more information regarding that part over here.

But in short: do not use JIRA Service Desk for a software development project. That is not what it is designed for. You could however use it complementary to JIRA Software. It is meant for your (external) customers - who are not JIRA Software Users - to report bugs and change requests. These can be linked perfectly to issues in JIRA Software, so support and development teams can work in there own dedicated, but linked environments.