Jira ServiceDesk - Customers and issue collector permissions

[Nicolas PR]

We are trying to get the issue collector of a ServiceDesk project accessible and functionnal for our logged (in Jira) customers. The collector is accessible through our webapp

1 - Theses Customers have a Jira Account (as ServiceDesk customers, without licences software or servicedesk)

2 - In the JIRA documentation of the issue collector, I see the user has to be authorized to "Create an issue in the project" to be recognized as Reporter of the issue.  (if not we used a standard reporter user)

3 - After adding the permission "Create issue" for the role "ServiceDesk Customer" (in correct project permission scheme), the collector still not set our user as reporter of the issue.

Is somebody faces the same issue ?

[Andy Heinzer]

The issue collector is a Jira Core feature.  It wasn't designed with Service Desk in mind.  That said it is possible to use it in Service Desk, but there are somethings to know about trying to do this.

Service Desk customers are not licensed users in Jira.  Their only access to create requests is via the customer portal and/or sending email to a specific mailbox (project settings permitting).   In either of those two methods, Jira isn't just creating an issue, but it's also setting a "request type".  Request type is a special field specific to Service Desk projects.  Core and Software projects don't use this specific field.  The issue collector can't set that specific field either.  So while you can use the issue collector to create issues in a service desk project, it can't set the request types for issues in that project.   This distinction is important to understand why this doesn't work the way you would expect.  When Jira issues don't have a request type set in a service desk project, lots of Service Desk specific functionality does not work (ie SLA times, customer notifications, etc).

What you could do is set the issue collector to have a default reporter.  However that default reporter will need to be an account that has a licensed Jira user account in order to be able to at least create the issue in that project first.  From there could use the steps in Automatically set Customer Request Type When Issue is Created via JIRA.  This KB explains how you can use Service Desk automation to make sure that all issues in that project have a request type set.

The major drawback I see of this is while you can create service desk issues this way, the person that is filing the report won't be directly associate with this issue.  Since they are not technically the reporter they wouldn't get any notifications about this request, unless the Agent were to change the reporter after the fact or add that user to the request participant field.

[Pedro Fonseca]

Hi Andy,

Although I can understand this is the way the tool works, why is the issue collector showing up in Service Desk projects if it doesn't fit the purpose?

Or simply inform about what you described?

You create features and make them available, but only work in portions of your products.

Worthless.

[Andy Heinzer]

Hi Pedro,

Issue collectors in Jira were created before Service Desk even existed.  Service Desk is a plugin for Jira.  It adds addition fields, features, etc.  The fields that would need to be updated in such a Jira issue to make it seen as a true Service Desk request simply are not available to the issue collector to be updated.   It would require a code change to the issue collectors to be able to do this natively.

There are a pair of existing feature requests to add that ability to the issue collector in

• JSDSERVER-1259
• JRASERVER-44337

Both of these requests have been around for 4 and 5 years respectively.  However throughout that time, they have gained less than 10 votes each.  That tends to prioritize their implementation a lot lower than many other features in high demand.   If you're interested to see what the Jira Core Server team and Jira Service Desk Server teams are working on, I'd recommend checking out the updated dashboard on https://jira.atlassian.com/secure/Dashboard.jspa

In the meantime, it is still possible to utilize Service Desk's own automation rules in order to update the request types field for these issues created by an issue collector.  Steps to do this are in Automatically set Customer Request Type When Issue is Created via JIRA. 

I hope this helps.

Andy

[Pedro Fonseca]

Hi Andy,

As I mentioned on my post, I understand the limitations for Service Desk, but if that's the case inform customers of its limitations.

I had to dig into several forums to find the information about the Service Desk Request Type, which would cause the issue.

On the other hand, I made a few more tests and in fact the functionality actually works for Service Desk, but there's something wrong with it anyway, because if I used my user to generate the Issue from the Issue Collector it actually adds my user as the Reporter, but if I use a username from a Customer, which has been granted the permission to Create Issue in this project, I get an error message.

This leads me to think that the Issue Collector only works if the user has a JIRA Service Desk application access, otherwise it won't.

Last but not least, to my understanding, JIRA Service Desk is no longer a plugin, but a product on its own. One might say that because it started as a plugin, the way it was built, has limitations which are complicated to overcome, which I understand.

Thanks for your quick feedback and follow-up and don't take me wrong, I love Atlassian products and manage several of them, and I am aware of the amount of features which are on your plate, but information should be available and it ain't.

Pedro