Best Practices for tracking work for people (vendors) who don't have access to Jira?

Question

Hi!
Are there any best practices or tips for tracking cards, sub tasks, etc that are being worked by someone who doesn't have access to Jira?

The person who doesn't have access is an external vendor, I don't want them to have access. But I would still like to track the work we need from them along with the work the rest of the team is doing.

Any advice or tips would be appreciated!

Fabrice Huart - NSI · Answer

Hi @Gearinger, Sarah M.

Thank you for your feedback.

I can suggest some other option to look at.

Are you using Jira Software Cloud Premium ?

If it’s the case, have you already tried the features of Advanced Roadmap to see the high level visibility that you need

https://support.atlassian.com/jira-software-cloud/docs/get-started-with-advanced-roadmaps/

Manage and See dependencies

https://support.atlassian.com/jira-software-cloud/docs/configure-dependencies-in-jira-for-advanced-roadmaps/

https://support.atlassian.com/jira-software-cloud/docs/what-are-dependencies-in-advanced-roadmaps/

Another option is to use Marketplace Apps like BigPicture or Structure for Jira for example depending the complexity of what you want to see and manage.

Another option If your external provider have it’s own tool, you can also make a « communication » between the tools with a module like Exalate

I hope this helps

Fabrice

Gearinger, Sarah M. · Answer

Thanks for the quick reply @Fabrice Huart - NSI
The Jira project we have is functioning more at a system level - think similar to Jira Align without being Jira Align... so I think creating a separate Jira project for the vendor won't be a good option because it won't give me the high level visibility I'm looking for. I do appreciate the suggestion!
I think I was hoping for something more like, "set the vendor up as a component" or "use labels" as a suggestion... neither of those are great options, this is kind of a tricky situation...

Fabrice Huart - NSI · Answer

Hi @Gearinger, Sarah M.

Maybe I can suggest that you create a separate and specific project for your external vendor. So you can give them access only to that project to follow their tasks and in your « internal » project you can use issues link to identify dependencies and relations between issues.

Your team can so access everything and see the whole picture, your external parties just see what is relevant for them in terms of task to do ( and even specific documentation space in Confluence if required)

What do you think of this way of splitting information and organizing things ?

Fabrice