I have a question on the fundamental, architectural, interoperation between JIRA Service Desk (JSD) and Riada Insight – specifically with respect to the user. There are two: the JSD user account (which, for us, is synced from Active Directory (via LDAP) and the Insight ‘User’ Object Type. For our purposes we created a ‘User’ object type in Insight, and that object type has an attribute (field) of ‘Email’ which is of type ‘User’ using a group called JIRA_SERVICEDESK_CUSTOMERS (all our users from AD) which links to the JSD user account.
The key question is how does Riada setup Insight to work with JSD so that JSD user account information (stored as an attribute in an Insight Object Type) can get back into JSD? How is the interoperation between the two systems designed? We currently are running JSD 3.8.1 and Insight 5.1.3.
Currently we maintain all user information in Insight, in the ‘User’ Object Type. The JSD user account is used solely as the account accessing the system, and obviously as the user in JSD.
Relationships between Object Types (for example like Users, Applications, Servers) are done via the Insight User Object. So if there is a ‘System Owner’ field (attribute) in the ‘Servers’ Object Type then it is chosen as an Insight User Object – not a JSD user account.
So, essentially, the JSD user account information is listed in the ‘Users’ Insight Object Type , but all relationships in Insight are done using the ‘native’ Insight user.
We have successfully setup custom Insight fields in JSD such that when a request is raised the special ‘Reporter’ user (the JSD user account) connects to the Insight ‘User’ so that the custom field is filtered to the specific Insight user. That part is OK. The question then comes if we need to reference a second user, for example:
- An Insight user has a manager, the manager field (attribute) is of type ‘Object’ (not JSD User) which references back into the ‘User’ Object Type (table).
- In the ‘Servers’ Object Type there is a field ‘System Owner’ of type ‘Object’ (again not JSD User) which references back into the ‘User’ Object Type (table).
If we setup all fields that refer to users as Type ‘User’ and point them to the JSD user directory instead of pointing them to the Insight ‘User’ Object Type then we would lose the linkage and relationships between all the Insight Object Types – which we don’t want to do.
But, as I understand… JSD needs to list JSD users in Service Desk requests because they are the users listed in the User Directories and that is needed for login, assigning permissions, emailing and so forth.
Say, for example, we have a Service Desk Request type needing Manager approval. We have to put the JSD user account into the Approvals field, but we have the relationship in Insight using the Insight user object. So if we know the user is ‘A’ and their manager is ‘B’ how do we retrieve the user ‘B’s JSD user account name (which is in the Insight User
So how do we get the JSD user information from a linked Insight field, if an Insight user has a manager which points back to the User object type how do we lookup the manager and then retrieve their JSD user account information.
