Hello Atlassian Community,
we are currently evaluating Atlassian with the goal of using it for external IT support.
So far, my overall impression is very positive – the product vision, UI, and capabilities look modern and promising.
However, I am currently struggling with some fundamental understanding and architecture questions, and I hope an experienced Atlassian expert can help clarify them. Ideally, I would also appreciate a short Teams call, if possible.
Context:
My CEO is generally ready to approve the license costs, but the final decision currently depends on clarifying exactly these basic topics.
Current situation
I understand that Atlassian now clearly positions Customer Service Management (CSM) for external customer support, rather than using Jira Service Management (JSM) alone.
At first glance, CSM does many things very well:
- dedicated support portal
- dedicated knowledge base
- AI agent
- strong customer experience focus
However, several things currently confuse me.
1️⃣ CSM service projects feel very limited
Compared to a classic JSM service project, a CSM service project feels extremely limited:
- no summary view
- no comprehensive agent workspace
- limited configuration and automation options
At the same time, we need to support multiple pipelines:
- classic IT support
- SaaS support
- dedicated enterprise support for different large customers
This leads to my first key question:
Is CSM intentionally not designed as the main agent workspace?
2️⃣ Where is the summary / central overview?
At the moment, I do not understand:
- how to get a summary overview in CSM
- or whether such a summary is intentionally not part of CSM
Which leads directly to the next question:
Are CSM tickets expected to be automatically transferred into a JSM project where the actual agent work happens?
3️⃣ Central visibility & agent workload
Our target state is quite clear:
- all tickets (IT, SaaS, Enterprise) should flow into a central place
- we need:
- consolidated agent workload views
- summary dashboards
- reports
- boards
across projects and pipelines.
Right now, it is unclear to me:
Whether this is supposed to be achieved mainly in CSM, in JSM, or by combining both.
4️⃣ Customer contacts & phone support
In addition to portal‑based support, we also provide phone support.
Therefore, it must be easy for us to:
- quickly create a customer contact
- including:
- first name
- last name
- email address
- phone number
Currently, I do not clearly see where customer contacts are meant to be maintained in a “classic” way – at least not as I would expect from other ITSM or CRM‑like systems.
Is customer contact management now exclusively part of CSM and no longer of classic JSM?
5️⃣ Overall impression / confusion
At the moment, my impression is:
- Atlassian is very powerful
- but in the area of external IT support / ITSM, it still feels either unfinished or insufficiently explained
I strongly suspect that I have not yet fully understood the paradigm shift between JSM and CSM, and I would like to clarify this before making a final licensing decision.
I would greatly appreciate:
- architectural guidance
- real‑world best practices
- and possibly a short exchange (Teams call) with an Atlassian expert
Thank you very much in advance!
Best regards,
Patrick
