Adding an additional comment category to a Jira issue

[Vaughan Rivett]

As a Creative Media Specialist, I want to have a third category of comments on a Jira issue so that Jira Agent are only able to see specific comments.

Background:

In our project, internal portal customers submit requests for the creation of marketing materials. Once a request is approved by the Creative Media Specialist, it is forwarded to an external Creative Agency.

Both the Creative Media Specialist and the Creative Agency serve as agents within the project.

We aim to prevent the Creative Agency from viewing both Internal Comments and Customer Comments (until the time the request is assigned to the Agency).

I propose introducing a new comment category named 'Creative Agency Comments', which would be exclusively visible to the creative agency, contingent on permissions and user roles.

Furthermore, any remarks made by the Creative Agency in this section should be accessible to the customer via the portal. I welcome any feedback or suggestions on this matter.

We are trying to prevent the agency from being confused by our internal discussions before the issue made its way to them, but need to have other agents and the customer in communication with the Agency as the work is being done. 

[Lisa Forstberg · Accepted solution]

Hi @Vaughan Rivett ,

I am afraid it is not possible at the moment to add a third category of communication the way you design it above. As an admin you are not allowed to change the naming of the different types of comments, add or remove them or add additional logic on top of what is already there. Not without some extensive hackery, which I wouldn't recommend. 

Both the Creative Media Specialist and the Creative Agency serve as agents which means they have full permissions to all of the information in the issue. 

I think you need to look through the needs again (prevent agency from being confused by internal discussions) and try to come up with a different solution design.

Will the agency need to have their own "internal communication", ie comments which should not be visible for the customer? and not visible for other agents?

A different solution might be to have the agency not serve as agents, but as customers. Then the internal comments will be hidden for them, and they will be able to comment via the portal to the customer. They can be allowed to perform status changes via the portal.  They will however only be able to see the simplified view of the ticket so might not be ideal. 

Another solution might be to create a linked ticket when you "hand over work" to the agency. You can do this through building an automation to  trigger on a certain status change and duplicate the issue information (comments will not be duplicated ) to a linked "Agency ticket" in which the agency can continue to discuss internally or with the customer. Of course if its a lot back and forth between you and the agency then this might not be an ideal solution.

best regards

/L

[Vaughan Rivett]

@Lisa Forstberg In the past I have had challenges with assigning tasks to portal users. They have to be an Agent to assign a task to them, if they weren't the requestor. 

If they are given Agent access, they can click on the issue number in the portal breadcrumbs and access the ticket in Jira. 

Maybe I could restrict their ability to view or add comments to the ticket and create a sub-task for comments. It's NOT a good solution.

I have another option I have been working on. It's a separate Jira Project, where the approved issue gets copied over to it. 

[Lisa Forstberg]

@Vaughan Rivett 

Yes you are correct, making the agency a customer (or request participant) will limit them to only be able to comment and not really take responsibility. A status could signal the agency responsibility but it won't work for assigning an issue to an individual and it will make it a little bit harder to work efficiently for the agency workers.

Creating a duplicate and linked issue by automation at a certain transition in the original issue perhaps? You don't need it to be in a separate Jira project, can be the same to enable the customer and agency to have a dialogue on the matter. but if separate you might also save some license cost at the same time. If the agency workers are confused about the abundance of information a separate project might do the trick.

If separate you need to then also automatically push comments to the customer (to the portal issue) as you needed the agency "to make remarks visible for the customer". 

Of course you also have the third option: train the agency to look past the internal comments. ;-) 

best regards

/L

[Vaughan Rivett]

I think the issue with the comments is more of an internal concern. Simply, put a change management approach would be beneficial