“Why was my Jira support ticket closed?”
When a customer asks this question, all of your team’s attention is then immediately drawn to the complete history, which includes who created the ticket, who worked on it, whether it was reassigned, and when its status changed.
The story actually starts much earlier when the customer first makes a support request on your website. At that point, you should have a simple method of converting the request into a Jira ticket, managing it, and keeping a record of each change.
So, let’s explore the full journey of a Jira support ticket from the first form submission to its complete history in Jira, and the tools that can help you manage the whole process with ease.
How to Manage Support Tickets in Jira from Start to Finish
Even if a support request begins outside of Jira, the entire process can still be handled within Jira.
The workflow can look like this:
Create a support form → Add it to your website → Customer submits a request → Jira ticket is created → Support team works on it → Track the ticket’s full history
This gives customers an easy way to contact your team without accessing Jira directly. At the same time, your support team gets Jira tickets they can assign, update, and manage in their usual workflow.
Let’s see how to set it up.
Step 1. Create a Support Request Form for Jira
You first need to have a method for gathering requests from your customers. For this example, we'll use Smart Forms for Jira by SaaSJet.
Using Smart Forms, you are able to create a support form and connect the submitted information with Jira. As a result, customers can submit requests via a simple form, and your team receives them as Jira tickets.
Build a form for support requests
Begin by creating a form that includes the information that your support team needs in order to understand the problem.
For example, your form can include:
- Name
- Email
- Request type
- Summary
- Description
- Priority
The form can be adapted to your support process. For example, an IT support team might ask about the device or operating system, while a product support team could ask customers to select the feature they are having trouble with.
You can also use required fields, validation, attachments, and conditional logic to collect better information without making every customer answer unnecessary questions. For example, selecting Technical issue could reveal additional fields for the affected product, error message, and screenshot.
The goal is simple: collect the right information from the start so your support team has enough context to begin working without additional back-and-forth.
Configure the form settings
When the form has been completed, switch to the Settings tab since it is there that you can determine what will take place when the form is submitted by someone.
For a support ticket workflow, two settings are especially important:
- Share form externally – Make the form public by using a shareable link or by embedding it on a website. This enables customers to send in their requests without having to work directly in Jira.
- Create work items – Configure the form to automatically create a new Jira work item after submission. Form responses can be mapped to Jira fields such as Description, Priority, or other standard and custom fields, so the submitted information appears directly in the created ticket.
Importantly, not every form question needs to become a Jira field. You can map only the information needed for ticket management while keeping the rest of the submitted response in the form. This makes it possible to collect detailed support information without creating a separate Jira custom field for every question.
You can also set up other actions. For example, you can display a custom message after the form has been submitted, automatically attach the form to the work items that have been created, and update the Jira fields.
Add the support form to your website
Next, make the form available to your customers. For example, your website might already include a Contact Support or Submit a Request page and if external sharing is enabled, you can make the form available via a public link or embed it directly onto a page.
The customer just opens the page, fills in the required fields, and submits the form. After that, a task will appear in Jira in the required department, with all the details from the form. It is particularly useful in the case where your customers do not have Jira accounts or do not need access to your internal Jira projects.
The example of the Jira work item that was created automatically in Jira after the form was submitted by the client:
Step 2. Track the Full History of Jira Support Tickets
When support tickets have been created and your team begins work on them, they can go through many changes. A ticket might be given a new assignee, transferred to a different status, have its priority updated, or have its fields modified more than once.
You can open a ticket and view its changes by using Jira's built-in History tab, which is useful when you want to check a particular task.
Yet if you have hundreds of support tickets and need to check for changes in all of them, it would take a great deal of time to open each one individually.
That’s where the Issue History for Jira (Work Item History) app by SaaSJet comes in. It shows the changes to multiple Jira tasks in a single location, which makes it simpler to search, filter, and review the history of your support tickets.
See, search, and filter Jira ticket history
With the Issue History for Jira, you can see the changes to tickets all in one place and use filters to narrow down the results. This helps support teams to quickly answer questions such as:
- When was the ticket created?
- Who changed its status?
- Who changed its priority?
- When was the ticket reassigned?
- What was the old value of the field?
The old and new values can be displayed together, along with the name of the person who performed the update and the time it was done.
For example, imagine a customer asks: Why was my ticket closed? Rather than going around looking in various places or trying to recall what happened, you can easily find the ticket, review its status changes, and see when it was closed and who made the change.
You can filter the history in order to look at several support tickets at the same time. For example, you might wish to see all the changes to the assignee from last month, the status updates for a particular project, or the changes made by a specific support agent.
It thus becomes a lot easier to find the correct information without having to open and check each Jira ticket individually.
Track deleted Jira tickets
There are cases when a support ticket is deleted, and afterward a person needs information about it. This is a problem since, when the ticket was deleted in Jira, you can't just restore it, open it, and check its history.
Issue History for Jira app can be used to spot deleted tickets and restore them if needed.
For support teams, this can be helpful when looking into cases of accidental deletions or when a user asks about an older customer request.
Export Jira ticket history
In some cases, just looking at the ticket history in Jira is not sufficient. You might need to pass that history on to another team, analyze the changes in a spreadsheet, draw up an internal report, or supply the records for an audit.
Using the Issue History for Jira functionality, you have the option to export the ticket history to Excel or CSV formats or use an API and then use that data outside of the app.
For example, a support manager can export the changes made during a particular period to see how tickets were reassigned, which fields were updated, and who made those changes.
As a result, the history of Jira tickets goes beyond being merely a record of previous activity and becomes a useful source of information for support investigations, reporting, and audits.
Why Combine Smart Forms and Issue History for Jira?
So, managing support tickets is not only about creating them. You need a simple method for gathering customer requests, converting them into Jira tickets, managing them, and then understanding what eventually happens to them.
It is in this area that Smart Forms for Jira and Issue History for Jira can work together. Each of the apps deals with a different stage of the support ticket journey:
Stage | What happens | App |
|---|
Collect | Customers submit support requests through a form | Smart Forms for Jira |
Create | Form submissions become Jira tickets | Smart Forms for Jira |
Manage | Your team works with the tickets in Jira | Jira |
Track | Ticket changes are recorded and reviewed | Issue History for Jira |
Investigate | See who changed what and when | Issue History for Jira |
Export | Export ticket history for reports or audits | Issue History for Jira |
The apps together cover all the stages of the support ticket lifecycle, taking the customer's initial request through to the full history of the Jira ticket.
👉 Try Smart Forms for Jira
👉 Try Issue History for Jira (Work Item History)
