Anyone using Jira for (human) case management - how did you configure Jira?

Question

I'm doing some research on if my organization can use Jira to track and manage counseling appointments, events, client intake, etc. with the population we serve. This isn't the typical use case for Jira, but we qualify for a free community license and we have a strict budget (we're a non-profit) so it's worth at least investigating. Examples of software platforms that more directly mirror our use cases are Athena Penelope or Social Solutions Apricot.

I have experience administrating Jira in a previous position and I have a test instance of Jira Core Server set up right now, but I'm struggling to come up with a way to configure the workflows, tasks, fields, etc in a way to cleanly reflect our real-life process.

In a nutshell, our real-life workflow is similar to that of a mental health therapist/professional:

receive client (person) referral -> referral reviewed by multiple people -> client approved -> client is assigned a counselor and/or a mentor -> client enters the program and regularly has meetings with counselor and/or mentor

Additionally the client may attend events that we plan. Ideally we want to capture this all in one place (in this case, within Jira). There are other nuances to the workflow, but that's the gist of it.

The main thing I'm having trouble with is how to have a coherent log of info and history for each client that shows their information and all of the meeting/event notes for what they participated in. I'm imagining the meeting and event notes would just be different types of issues, possibly in different projects, but it's not clear to me if I could separate those logs out clearly by individual client.

Has anyone done anything similar with Jira? If so, I'd love to hear how you actually configured Jira or if there are any add-ons that helped you.

Thanks!

Dulaine Stander · Answer

Hi There!  Just came across this question, 5 years later I'm doing the same research.  On which product did you land ultimately to manage cases?

Susan Duncombe · Answer

Hi Meg,

Thanks for the input! I appreciate stressing the importance of security here - it's definitely on our radar. At this point I'm just trying to determine if it's even worth looking into Jira/Atlassian products more seriously before asking our legal team to review the software and potential hosting environments for the necessary compliance.

Interesting thought to use confluence for client profiles/info, that hadn't dawned on me yet. I think that could work nicely in the short term, but might get a bit ugly in the long-term as the client backlog builds up over time. I'll play with it a bit :)

Thanks again for the suggestions!

Meg Holbrook · Answer

Hey Kyle,

The first thing I'm going to note is that you will need to be very careful with HIPAA compliance guidlelines when using JIRA for this kind of application. You will want any legal or compliance team members to fully vet (I'm sure you've considered it, but it bears repeating).

Secondly, all compliance aside, I'd recommend creating a confluence instance if you can get a license where you can track client details and meeting notes. These would ultimately link back to a single or set of JIRA issues.

I'm sure you could add a billion custom fields and work out a way to make this a reality, but it sounds less trying to keep client documentation in a system that's made for keeping documentation and articles, while handling the workflows and processes through a program which is made for that.