Linking service management issues to ideas

[David]

I'm looking for suggestions on how best to link help desk issues to ideas. Most all of our product ideas and suggestions come through our help desk project so I'm trying to determine the best work flow to capture these without a lot of manual work. I also want to be able to link these so we don't lose sight of which customer and user made the request. 

[Matthew Pavlovich]

Hey David, I created an automation on a transition for the Idea ticket in JSM. Once the JSM agent reviews the Idea that all information has been populated and makes sense, they transition from eg New to Assess.  On transition it kicks off the automation and creates a new JPD Idea ticket in the relevant JPD Project (i had a customfield in the JSM ticket that i would use to help target one of our multiple JPD projects) and adds the 'Linked Issues' property (i used 'relates') connecting the trigger issue and its new JPD Idea.  There are sometimes complexities copying across related information from JSM to JPD Team Managed i had to use JSON in 'Additional Fields'. Once you are in the JPD project you then use the Delivery Ticket creation to connect the actual Feature/Epic ticket via the 'Implements' link. Hope that helps.

[Troy Moore]

@Matthew Pavlovich can you explain further the use of JSON objects to get those values into JPD? I have been trying to find a workaround for this ever since JPD was established. Hopefully the Global Field Configuration update that Atlassian is working on will solve this... nevertheless, I am interested in your approach... How do you initiate this?

[Matthew Pavlovich]

Hey @Troy Moore ,

Once you do a 'Create Issue' action in automation there are some fields you can just simply copy across (Summary, Desc, Assignee etc) but yes accessing the JPD fields i found had to be done using the 'More Options, Additional fields' box. 

The key is you need to directly reference the customfield ids of both JPD (on the left) and the JSM (on the right). It also then varys if its a list, date or text.

eg

{
"fields": { 

"customfield_13000": "{{issue.customfield_14222.asJsonStringArray}}",

"customfield_13999": "{{issue.customfield_14333.jiraDate}}",

"customfield_14111": "{{issue.customfield_14444}}",
               }
}

Hope that helps!

[David]

@Matthew Pavlovich @Tanguy Crusson 

How are you handling cases where an idea already exists and you want to add a new support issue as an insight instead of an idea?

My concern is our support team isn't aware of all the ideas and I don't want them to have to look through them all before the can decide if the issue is a new idea or an insight to an existing idea.

I also want to do my best to keep from having ideas just thrown over the fence to the product team and we have to deal with a lot of duplicates.

Ideally, there would be two workflows for our support team. One lets them create a new idea and the other creates an insight for an existing idea. I'm not sure if automation supports adding a new idea?

[Tanguy Crusson]

Hi @David , we use a Jira Service Management project for receiving user feedback, and then use the Jira Product Discovery Chrome extension to create ideas and/or add insights to ideas from a JSM ticket. Have you tried this? https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/jira-product-discovery/flacajjkcnlngpeapmnmignmjgddamah

[David]

@Tanguy Crusson - I do have the extension, but I'm still in the process of setting up the projects. My hope is to keep links so that when we deliver a feature, we can track back to the original help desk tickets to know who requested them? 

We like to reach out directly to our customers when a feature they requested has been delivered.

[Tanguy Crusson]

Yep, that should work: when you add a JSM ticket to an insight (via the Chrome extension or the UI), it creates a link between the idea and the ticket. 

[Troy Moore]

Hey @David  

I've found that setting up automations to create tickets in JPD can address the need you mentioned. By configuring an automation rule in JSM, you can have it trigger a new ticket creation in JPD as soon as the original ticket in JSM reaches a specified status or any other condition you see fit. This process can include automatic linking of the JSM ticket to the new one in JPD.

I like doing this because it enables external user input into JPD by way of JSM. JSM allows for conditional questioning via Forms which is more useful than the built in 'Create' templates within JPD.

[David]

@Troy Moore Have you had any issues where you're duplicating ideas? We have a similar process and my plan is to create an automation rule to create an Idea in JPD on a certain status change.

I need all the support issues to transition to this "Idea Submitted" status so they are consistent. What I'm concerned with is cases where a support issue isn't a new idea, but an insight for an existing idea. I'm not sure if there is a better way to handle this other than to let the idea get created and then merge it in JPD as needed. 

I know we can use the extension to create an insight and link it, but I still need the support issue status updated. Even if we create the linked insight, a new idea is going to be created when the status is changed to Idea Submitted. Do you think we can link the insight first and then do a check on the automation rule that says, if an idea is already linked, don't create a new idea? Something like that?

Any thoughts? Thanks

@Tanguy Crusson 

[Troy Moore]

@David You may want to consider creating a different JSM request type and having a separate automation flow conditionally decisioning based on request type. "Insight" JSM request type vs. "New Idea" JSM request type could potentially be an avenue. However, that would require your submitters to know what ideas already exist in JPD and to someway identify which current idea the "insight" request type supports. Currently, JSM does not support a JPD linked issue functionality (I just checked) so the linking for current active idea would have to be somewhat manual.

[Troy Moore]

@Matthew Pavlovich Really great stuff here! Going to try this today!