Managing Billable Customer Requests in Jira Service

Question

Hello,

I am looking at Jira as a solution for a problem we have now.  We use Mantis BT for tracking issues within the business.  This has worked fairly well for simple projects, but in the past few years we are finding that our projects are becoming more complex, and Mantis just isn't cutting it anymore.

The main trouble is that

1) The Mantis Workflow is the same for all issue types, and we now find that we have different issue workflows that should be followed depending on the type

2) The customers need to be able to log in and see the issues (whether created by us or them) for their own PM team, so we need some visibility for them

3) In many cases (almost all) customer feature requests need to be quoted and then approved by the customer before we begin working.

4) Sometimes a simple customer issue (such as a request to have a report written) might end up being extended and augmented (add some previously undisclosed features to the new report) - so the original issue needs to have the ability to have a feature request added to the feature request, quoted but tracked as being related to the original.

5) Lastly, the good old fashioned service desk type features that the program seems to be meant for.

I _think_ Jira will handle these cases, but I want to check and see.

Thanks for taking the time to look at this.

-Rob

Ivan Tovbin · Answer

Ah, I see. You can configure as many different request types as your heart desires. You can add different fields to your request types for your customers to fill out. Your customers will be able to track their open requests through the customer portal.

Robert Jolliffe · Answer

Thanks for your reply.

This helps a lot.

Good old fashioned service requests =  "I get an error ... help me fix it" and track the resolution of that issue

Ivan Tovbin · Answer

Hi Robert,

1) Yes, Jira can have different workflows associated with different issue types. Keep in mind though, that you can have a single workflow cover a number of issue types, but you can't have an issue type associated with multiple workflows at once within a single project.

2) Customer portal is a standard feature of Jira Service Desk. By default all raised tickets are visible to their respective reporters and any other people or organizations that a reporter chooses to share his ticket with.

3) This can be done by configuring an approval status within your workflow. It's also a standard feature of Jira Service Desk.

4) This is easily doable by creating a subtask for the current issue or creating an issue link to another issue.

5) Not sure what you mean exactly by "good old fashioned service desk type features". If you can clalirfy I might be able to help further.

Hope this helps.