Jira as a ticket system

Question

Hello dear Jira users/ experts,

We are looking into rolling-out the atlassian suite for our software development divisions within my company and one question that is outstanding currently is whether we can customize Jira in an efficient manner to be used as a ticket system from our Helpdesk/ support team or whether we necessarily need to integrate an extra ticket system like Zendesk. So my question is, when do I need to integrate a tool like Zendesk, i.e. what are Jira's restrictions vs. Zendesk?

Generally this is the rough workflow of our helpdesk:

1. End user should be able to issue a ticket via an online form. However, tickets via email is definitely a nice to have.

2. Ticket is created in ticket system and dispatched

3. Tickets can be forwarded via email to other groups

4. Ticket status is visible for end user

Please note that how this influences the license model is also interesting for me.

thanks & cheers, LAJ

Igor Loskutov · Answer

For 1) you can use jira Issue Collectors that was built-in in Jira 5.1 and has support in 5.0 too.

for 4) I use custom mail handler that creates user for every reporter email but removes this user from any group but special group for email accounts that isn't jira user group and not consume license. It is simplest approach if you want notificate users about issue changes but has next drawback : build-in user notifications aren't too flexible and for complex etmplates with non-standart velocity context you should disable built-in notifications and use custom event listener that sends emails.

It seems that for powerful ticket system you should do some coding.

JohnA_xb3t2l · Answer

Hi Laj,

How to use JIRA as a ticket machine is a very common question, but not one that is easy to answer. However we have a document that outlines how to use JIRA as a support system and I believe that it will answer the questions you have asked above: https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRA/JIRA+as+a+Support+System

All the best,
John