Multiple ways to manage customers on Service Desk - which to use?

[Siobhan Flynn]

Hi all,
I'm looking at how we manage customers on our Service Desk. So far I've found 4 different groupings of customers, and I am lost as to how they interact or which one the Service Desk is respecting. In addition, we use approved domains to grant internal customers access to the portal, so do I even need to maintain these? Any advice would be helpful.

1. Role " Serviced Desk Customers" in the People section of the Service Project settings:
   
   
   
   
2. Customers tab on the Service Project main sidebar:
   
   
   
   
3. Group "servicedesk-customers"  in Administration
   
   
   
   
4. Portal Only customers also in Administration on a different tab
   
   
   
   

[Marc - Devoteam · Accepted solution]

HI @Siobhan Flynn 

1. The Role " Serviced Desk Customers" is by default set in permissions scheme, and the Jira system
   
   User and Groups in you Atlassian Administration can be set to the project Role " Serviced Desk Customers", see the permission scheme what their permissions are.
2. If you have an Open JSM project, so users are able to sign up from the portal, they will be added to the Customer tab on the JSM project
3. Is a standard group in the system, is a default.
   
   This group is the same as any other group in the system
   
   This group can be used to add users and assigned the group the Serviced Desk Customers role in a JSM project.
4. This is an option in Atlassian Administration where ORG admins can manage portal-only users, but not granting access.
   

See documentation on differences on Customer Account types.

[Siobhan Flynn]

Hi thanks for your response :)

So am I correct in understanding 1 & 2 are related ONLY to that specific Service Desk project, whereas 3 & 4 are global and therefore would affect ALL Service Desk projects?

Also what would happen if I had a customer in 2, but they were not reflected in the global admin group - is that ok? Which one overrides?

[Marc - Devoteam]

Hi @Siobhan Flynn 

Yes 1 and 2 are JSM Specific.

# and 4 are Jira Global.

Hi by default there is no override, this group "jira-servicedesk-customers" is a default from Atlassian, you can use this group or not, this is not a requirement.

I don't use this group. 

3 is an group in the systems that can be granted a role on the project, it can also be set to permissions in the permission scheme.

There is a big difference in Customer permissions and Permissions and Roles. the first are only applicable to JSM projects.

The second is who Roles and Permissions are managed overall in any Jira project

I'll explain again, baes on your options.

1. Project people, any user mentioned on the People section and their set Role is related to the Permission Scheme on the project
2. Any user (customer) that raised an issue via the portal or email (if you use an email request type) will be visible here.
3. Default group from Atlassian in JSM setup in Atlassian Administration
4. List of all the active and inactive customers from any JSM project in your Cloud instance

[Siobhan Flynn]

Hi @Marc - Devoteam thank you so much, really appreciate this :)

[Asha Goyal]

Hello @Siobhan Flynn 

1 and 2 are the one and the same option. If you add customer at one place, it will start reflecting on another if added as customer role.

3 option mainly to control the project permissions. Groups are mainly to control the Permissions/Notifications etc.

4th option is for the list of all the active and inactive customers. You can pull out all the customers list in all the service desk project in your instance. Additionally, deleting the customers/ deactivting can be done from here.

Hope this helps you.

Thanks

Asha

[Siobhan Flynn]

Hi, thank you. 
I'm making some headway but still a bit confused. I've asked @Marc - Devoteam above some other questions which I'd love your input on too. 
Additionally, since we are using an approved domain for our internal staff, do I need to maintain these areas or are they automatic now?