Best practices for sharing JSM and Jira reports with external customers

Question

Hello Atlassian Community,

We are looking for advice on the best way to provide external customers access to view and collaborate on issues in our Jira Service Management (JSM) instance.

Our goal is to allow customers to log tickets in a JSM portal, while still being able to link related issues to internal Jira Software projects for escalation and tracking with our development teams.

Some specific questions:

* What is the recommended approach for sharing JSM tickets and related Jira issues with external users?
* We were considering creating a Confluence space and embedding JSM reports/charts using Jira macros. Would external Confluence users be able to view and comment on the embedded Jira content?
* Has anyone set up a similar external collaboration process between JSM and Jira Software? What worked well or posed challenges?
* Any other tips or best practices for providing external customer access to Jira while maintaining separation of internal issues?

We want to balance open collaboration with customers and protecting internal project data. Hoping to learn from the community's experience with similar external Jira access scenarios.

Appreciate any guidance! Let me know if any clarification would help.

Mehr_miniOrange · Answer

Hi @J.P. Mehlhaff

When you’re sharing Jira or JSM reports with people outside your org, the tricky part is giving them enough visibility without losing control. The built-in options are a bit limited. You either give them access (which isn’t always ideal) or send exports that quickly go outdated.

A better approach is to only share what’s actually needed, instead of exposing entire projects.

Some Marketplace apps, like Secure Share, help with this by letting you generate secure links for specific reports or issues. It allows external users to comment on shared issues and external users can stay updated in real time without needing full access.

Rina Nir · Answer

Hi @J.P. Mehlhaff 
Its been a while since you posted your question, but I only now saw this and would add a reply for the sake of the whole community.

You can have Confluence users see data about Jira issues if you user this app: Jira Snapshots for Confluence (disclosureL I am the product manager). Basically- when using this app data is copied into Confluence and what users see is a Confluence local reflection of Jira data at a point in time.

There is this community article  that provides more details.

We have users using it specifically to the use case you describe- because Jira Snapshots does also support the JSM specific fields- request type and SLA.

Rina

Levente Szabo _Midori_ · Answer

An alternative for communicating Jira Service Management reports/progress with external shareholders is to export to formats like Excel.

Previously, I published a comprehensive collection of Jira Service Management Excel reports that complement the default JSM reports. This could also be a useful resource for those looking to externally share their Jira Service Management data in Excel reports safely.