How do I edit contact info on a "synced" contact?

[Drew Angell]

As an example, I have a ticket that was created through my Service Desk portal, and it came in with an Atlas CRM contact created using the email address:

I click the little arrow button to view the contact record, which takes me here:

From here, if I click the Edit Information button the Name and Email are grayed out / disabled, and I cannot adjust the values.

Instead, if I click the "View user profile" link it sends me to a page that says the user does not exist.

What's going on here, and how do I fix it?  Any information on this would be greatly appreciated.  Thanks!

[Maarten Arts · Accepted solution]

Hey Andrew,

Maarten from Atlas CRM here. You can't edit the name of a synced contact, because Atlas CRM syncs the name from the customer profile. Depending on your JSD settings you can have customers that haven't filled out a username, so Jira uses their email address as username.

I agree that it's quite annoying that you can't just edit the name in Atlas CRM. We have solved this problem in the Server version of Atlas CRM and we plan to bring the solution to Cloud as well. So this will be solved in the future.

For now, however, synced contacts behave differently from regular contacts. We have written about it in the documentation here: https://www.atlascrm.io/documentation/advanced-jira-user-syncing/.

The view profile link should link to Jira's user profile. It looks like the URL in Jira has changed and we now link to the wrong address, which is why you're seeing Jira's "We're off the beaten track" page. I'll see if I can reproduce this and send a bug report to our development team.

Does this help you understand the situation? Feel free to ask more questions here or in our service desk: https://avisi-support.atlassian.net/servicedesk/customer/portal/10.

Cheers,
Maarten

[Drew Angell]

Thanks for the quick reply, although not exactly great info to receive.

"The view profile link should link to Jira's user profile."

Maybe that's the problem.  This isn't a Jira user in my system.  This is just a person who submitted a Service Desk ticket through our portal.  Does that make them a "Jira User"?

I do see them in Service Desk -> Customers, but I cannot edit them there either.  

This whole thing just feels broken and unusable right now.  The only way I can make it work is to delete the contact it created automatically (so I guess I might as well disable sync) and create it manually.

Of course, this requires many screens and clicks and lots of time wasting steps.  Also, disabling sync would require me to manually add that person to every new ticket going forward, which sort of defeats the purpose of trying to depend on a CRM system to help you manage that stuff.

Not really sure what I'm paying for here if simple procedures like updating the contact information are not available in Cloud.  

"This will be solved in the future." 

Are we talking a week, a month, a year, 5 years?  

[Maarten Arts]

There are two problems here:

1. You can't update the name of a customer

The idea behind synced contacts is that you don't need to manually fill out the name of the customer, since it's synced from the Jira User account or Jira Service Desk Customer account.

When a user or customer does not fill it out, you can update their name in an admin screen. However, there is a bug in Jira Service Desk where apps (like Atlas CRM) don't receive updates about these changing names.

We're talking to Atlassian about this, but apparently it's a bigger problem that they need to solve. You can follow the progress in this public issue: https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JSDCLOUD-8611.

In the meantime, we're building functionality that will make this whole process easier. We've built it for Server, like I mentioned. And we're now working on bringing this to Cloud as well. It's not a simple change however, so I suspect that it will take us a while before it's available.

But we're working on this as we speak. And we plan on releasing it later this year. But I don't have an estimate at this moment.

2. The link to the profile no longer works

The second problem is that the link to the customer profile no longer works. I think there used to be a profile page for JSD Customers. But a lot has changed with Atlassian accounts lately and they're currently not there anymore. We should remove the link to avoid confusion, I'll make an issue for that.

[Drew Angell]

Thanks for the additional feedback.

I guess I'm still confused, though, about how exactly I'm supposed to edit a synced contact record.  

It seems like I should be able to update the name and other info from the related record that is being synced with.  

However, when I find the synced contact (email) in Service Desk customers, there's no way for me to edit anything there either.  

If I click to view the Open/Closed issues for this customer, I can then see their email as a link under "reporter".  However, when I click that, it sends me to https://angelleye.atlassian.net/jira/people/search/ which just shows my actual Jira/Service Desk agents, but nothing about "customers".

So I guess my other option is to disable the sync feature altogether, but then it's not going to automatically add those issues to the contact/company in Atlas CRM, right?  So I'd have to remember to manually add that (to both the contact and the company) on every ticket that comes in.  

Please let me know if I really am just stuck with nothing but these options, or if there's some sort of a way to edit the contact that I'm overlooking here after reading the docs you provided.  Thanks!

[Maarten Arts]

It seems like I should be able to update the name and other info from the related record that is being synced with.

That's correct, but this does not currently work due to a bug in Jira Service Desk. Atlassian is working on it, but it's not an easy one to fix apparently.

However, when I find the synced contact (email) in Service Desk customers, there's no way for me to edit anything there either.

You should be able to edit the name when you navigate to:

• Settings
• User management
• Jira Service Desk

Here you'll find your JSD Customers and you should be able to edit their names. But these changes will not be reflected in Atlas CRM until Atlassian fixes the bug in Jira Service Desk.

If I click to view the Open/Closed issues for this customer, I can then see their email as a link under "reporter".  However, when I click that, it sends me to https://angelleye.atlassian.net/jira/people/search/ which just shows my actual Jira/Service Desk agents, but nothing about "customers".

I'm not quite sure what link you're clicking on. Could you perhaps share a screenshot? You can send it to our service desk if you prefer. And please make any personal information illegible.

So I guess my other option is to disable the sync feature altogether, but then it's not going to automatically add those issues to the contact/company in Atlas CRM, right? So I'd have to remember to manually add that (to both the contact and the company) on every ticket that comes in.

You can disable the sync feature and it will still automatically link the issues for you. But it will only do that for customer that has an Atlas CRM contact. So if you have an Atlas CRM contact for each customer, this is a good solution for you. You just need to remember to add a contact for any new customer.