Difference of Agents and Customer in Jira Service Management

[Sehrish Gul]

Dear All,

I would like to know what the term 'Agents' and 'Customers' in Jira Service Management refer to and what's the main difference between both.

• What features are available to agents but not customers, and vice versa?
• What actions can an agent perform that a customer cannot, and vice versa?

[Mathew Lederman]

@Kawan Diogo's answer is good, but perhaps too much information detail if you're just looking into the basics.

• Customers submit tickets - No license required.
• Agents work tickets - Must have a JSM license.

[Kawan Diogo]

Hi @Sehrish Gul 

Here a short description about the two roles

Agents are the team members who handle and resolve requests. They have full access to queues, can update issues, add internal notes, and communicate with customers.

Customers are the people submitting requests. They don’t need a Jira license and can only see and interact with their own tickets through the portal or email.

Simply put: Agents work on requests, while Customers create and track them.

For more information about the roles you can read in What are project roles in Jira Service Management?

Best Regards.

[Kawan Diogo]

Some features Agents can perform:
Access queues and manage requests.
Edit issues, change statuses, and assign tickets.
Add internal comments visible only to the team.
Use JQL for advanced issue searching.
Create and manage SLAs and automation rules.

Some features Customers can perform:
Submit requests via the portal or email.
View and comment only on their own requests (unless shared).
Approve or reject requests (if they are approvers).

[Sehrish Gul]

Doe jira offer AD integrations?  like

• Customer 1 → HOD 1
• Customer 2 → HOD 2
• Customer 3 → HOD 1
• Customer 4 → HOD 3

I need to set it up so that when Customer 1 or Customer 3 submits a ticket, it is automatically assigned to HOD 1. Similarly, when Customer 2 submits a ticket, it should be automatically assigned to HOD 2 and  when Customer 4 submits a ticket, it should be automatically assigned to HOD 3.

If so what is way forward?

[Mathew Lederman]

Yes and no. 

Yes, you can connect Jira with an LDAP directory: https://confluence.atlassian.com/adminjiraserver/connecting-to-an-ldap-directory-938847052.html.

No, Jira does not recognize assigning requests to groups. You can create a group custom field and use your AD groups connected through LDAP. For my organization we created a field called 'Request Assignment Group' and have it connected to ~250 AD groups. That field triggers automation to send notifications because Jira won't do that natively.

[Mathew Lederman]

Sorry, I provided documentation for Server. You're on Cloud, so it would go through your identity provider: https://support.atlassian.com/provisioning-users/docs/understand-user-provisioning/. Same result, different process.