How long does it take to implement Jira Service Desk ?

[Chris Ellard]

can any one help me

I am considering purchasing Jira Service Desk on the Cloud, how long does it take to be up and running with 15 Agents , 40 Live Service issues ( change requests) with an automated workflow through 3 departments ?

Do I need any help from Atlassian to get the Cloud instance up and running ?

many thanks

Chris 

[Jack Brickey]

@Chris Ellard, it is really hard to answer this question but let me provide some guidance and some things to consider:

1. Installation of cloud is simple and you can be up and running on a basic solution w/in 1-2 days. Now this isn't likely to be what you would deploy but it is something you can use for trial and error and learning. Let's call this your "sandbox". I highly encourage you to create a sandbox until you are comfortable.
2. If you currently use Jira Software or Core things will go much quicker as many of the concepts are the same. That said there are also many unique concepts in JSD so if you do have experience w/ JSW then you will find yourself scratching your head at times.
3. The number of agents won't add much time to the setup unless you plan to do a lot of unique things for each agent, e.g. unique queues, dashboards, unique permissions, etc.
4. I am not sure what you mean by 40 Live Service issues but maybe, in JSD-speak you mean request types. If so then that is maybe a 2-4hr of work depending on the details, e.g. required fields for each request type, grouping of request types, etc.
5. I'm not sure how your 3 departments will factor in w/o more info but is sounds like possibly your customer will be opening requests that ultimately funnel into one of 3 internal groups. For this you will want to consider if you have three projects or a single project.
6. Adding customers can take some time unless you elect self-signup which has its pros and cons. Grouping customer into Organizations adds a bit of time
7. Building workflows can be very simple or very complex depending on your needs. My advice is to start simple and add complexity only as needed otherwise you will find yourself unraveling things.

There is lots more to consider and I recommend you leverage Atlassian's documentation for getting started guide and other documentation.

Just as a stake in the ground I would plan 1-2 weeks to be fully operational depending on your current level of knowledge. Again, you can easily follow their guide and have a basic JSD up in running in 1-2 days so ultimately you may find that you can get the team moving on a basic setup and then add/tweak over time. You just don't want to intro a solution and the completely change it a week later.

[Chris Ellard]

Thank you Jack this is very helpful, I will consider your questions.

I have no previous knowledge of Jira so will have to add in a fair degree of contingency.

[Josh Steckler]

Yes thanks @Jack Brickey for the very through answer.

[Mike Bowen]

It took me (a Jira Service Desk) noob a month to build the service desk I wanted from scratch. We had Zendesk Service Desk in place, used by 17 agents, with 35+ Request Types.

I used the basic customer support template to start with, but there were lots of changes to be made and each change affected something I didn't know about, so I had to look it up online, through their Jira documentation, by asking questions of the community and by raising tickets Atlassian Support desk. This was most valuable as it showed me how the customer portal worked. The Jira Support team are great by the way, always came back with an answer or solution.

I agree with the above, use the trial period to build something you can trial and error on, a sandbox is a great stress reliever. I basically learnt on my production environment but had no real customers affected, just a lot of Gmail test accounts.

If one has no experience of Jira, I would say you need at least a month, as one needs to get familiar with the menus and many sub-menus of the project settings as well as Jira as a whole. There is quite a bit of overlapping.

I would also say set up some goals and milestones on what needs to be achieved. There is surprisingly a lot to do, especially if you are moving from one service desk to another.  Don't forget about your customer and the time old tradition of "No one likes change". Jira Service Desk is different to Zendesk, and your agents and customer soon realise this, so think of them when you are planning their experience. 

[Josh Steckler]

I would suggest using the free trial option. I have implemented JSD for 100 agents and about 50 request types. It's not the actual time to make the Jira workflows, fields, request types, automation, etc. that's the the most difficult. It's the onboarding and business alignment of the users and agents.

If you are familiar with managing Jira basics such as workflows, fields, screens, and permissions, you should be able to handle configuring JSD too.

[Chris Ellard]

Thanks Josh much appreciated