What's the best way to automatically transition an issue to a new status from non-agent input?

[tyler.hushing]

I'm trying to take a multi-department process (repair orders) and streamline it in Jira Service Desk. I want to use statuses to show where in the process we are, and allow each department to be able to transition to the next status, which can automatically alert the next department, and so on (ex: technician evaluates unit and needs part -> materials orders part -> part is received -> technician repairs unit -> unit to QA -> unit to shipping). The problem is I don't want an agent to have to touch it at every stage of the process to manually transition to the next status, and I want some simple action from each party involved to drive transitions to the next status. Is there a way to accomplish this with Jira SD, and if so, what's the best way?

[Hernan Halabi - Elite IT Consulting Group · Accepted solution]

Someone at some point will have to do something.

Some alternatives you might have are:

Use automation module so whenever anyone adds a comment, then the ticket moves to the next status

Use SLAs to transition issues when the time expires.

If the process happens in other tools, maybe you can develop something that updates the tickets via REST API.

The last one is the most reliable I would but I doubt is useful for this case. The others you can't be sure that the status will really reflect the scenario unless you are certain that people will only comment when things are done or time spent on a status is always the same.

[tyler.hushing]

Most if not all of the people involved have Jira accounts but are not Jira SD agents, so maybe I'm realizing that this is something I should be doing in Jira and not Jira SD. It would be nice if the customer interaction and the internal collaboration could all happen in one place, but restricting the ability to transition to new statuses to just agents makes that near impossible it seems. 

Thanks for your help! 

[Hernan Halabi - Elite IT Consulting Group]

You can show transitions to customers if you want. You need to edit the workflow, select the transition and choose to show it to costumers on the portal.

[tyler.hushing]

Customer visibility isn't my concern, my priority is streamlining this process, automating notifications to the next parties in the process, collecting data on how long a unit is in each status, etc. I think I can do all of this in Jira so I think I just need to transition to a Jira project not Jira SD. 

[Hernan Halabi - Elite IT Consulting Group]

certainly you can... just some of the options I mentioned wouldn't work since slas are a JSD feature, yet there are addons to overcome that limitation as well as to automate workflow transitions.

[tyler.hushing]

Hmm, I don't like the idea of losing access to SLAs... is there a way to have a dummy JSD issue that just mirrors statuses of a Jira issue? Or some other way to get the best of both worlds?

[Andrew Laden]

Well, you can use automation to keep them in sync, though that might get a little complex. (or use post function in the non SD issue to execute a transition in the SD issue.)

If SLAs is all you want, you may just want to buy a SLA addon for jira so you aren't restricted to the JSD SLA functions.

[Andrew Laden]

There are a few options with addons that can be used to create a "proxy" agent to take the actions. Not are as simple as Allowing a non-agent to transition, but that is the restriction that drives the licensing model for JSD.

One examples

Automation for Jira - have the user enter a specifically formatted comment, and have the automation watch for comment added and if it finds the string, execute the transition as a licensed user. (or maybe update a field instead of a comment)