Internal service desk

[kilinich]

Hi, everyone!

I'd like to ask how you manage to use JSD as internal service desk? Is it possible to set it as service management / change management process automaton software? I faced few major problems with that:

"Customers" (our colleagues) couldn't edit/change/issue, even correct their own comments. It's unacceptable for SD software, sometimes customer need to create draft (especially if it's CR) and be able to work with it. So the solution is to make everyone agents which is quite expensive and actually customers don't need that much.

Permission control scheme is very simple, you can't set issue read only for agents if it's in some status (like analysis, where only change manager should be able to make transition or correction), you can't hide, make read-only fields for roles/in some status. That makes chaos if agents is not follow strict rules.

Approvals is very simple and not flexible enough (still with bugs), you can't set up approvers based on customer's manager or his location, or components, you can't make it serial, can't  even change button names Approve/Decline. Approvers can't add/delegate approval and so on.

So how did you solve it?

[Gezim Shehu [Communardo]]

Sticking to basics, SD offers interaction on 2 levels, agent and customer, meaning that, theoretically, reporters should only interact from the portal side, where access to what they can do is strictly limited. So I would not advise SD in your scenario.

Regarding read only attributes, hiding/showing fields, well some of this is doable out of the box and some requires customization (though easily with  scripting addons).

Approvals is straight forward simple, however how you manage the workflow is what makes it customized. We have setup approvals in SD (and via email), working fine with manager approval (no location as not needed in our instance). This was done via integration in our case with Active Directory and some scripting for emails. We have also setup delegation and backups.

Really, the possibilities are endless once you begin customizing and it's really flexible.

However it depends if you are willing to put your "development" work on it or find something else which offers this  kind of functionality out of the box.

One question though, have you considered using Software instead?

Since it's only internal and you need interaction, I don't see Service Desk as the most valid option for you.

Again, you could also do these customizations easily in Software. Mostly changes in worfklows and some clever screens configuration.