Out of Office Calendar for a JSM Project

[Mike Thomas]

Hello, 

I'm an admin for our team. Our team (roughly 30 of us) are currently using a JSM project (from a template) to work high level escalations. Jira is relatively new to us, and we have been using this for a year. It's working great, but one issue we are seeing are when folks are out of office and issues get assigned to them and not their backup causing delays in being worked. I have created a dashboard to try catch a case that's been sitting out there with no action taken after X hours, however it's easy to miss some and a lot of these escalations are time sensitive.  

I've read up on calendar options in the forums here and from an OOO perspective, I did find an Out of Office APP available for download that may work for us. The issue we are running into is when it comes to getting apps approved, it can take months to get approval to download any app at our company simply due to risk. 

I see in settings a calendar option; however, this seems to be for establishing SLA's and not so much a team/user calendar option. Perhaps there's one available somewhere that I'm just not seeing it?

Let me explain what we're looking to accomplish here:

#1: Each user be able to add the days they are planning to be out and label the reason for their OOO (i.e. H=Holiday, S=Scheduled PTO, J=Jury Duty, CS=Community Service, etc.,.)

#2: Establish automations for when X-person is OOO, so then their backup would automatically get assigned to any new issue that gets created while they're out. 

#3: Allow us all to have a monthly snapshot view (similar to outlook) that shows who is out when each day/week. This also allows upper-level leadership to view who all is out and when, especially during end of year around the holidays. 

#4: View totals/balances of time entered for each user. 

Currently our team uses an excel doc within SharePoint to enter our days out etc., and that's worked fine for years, however it doesn't allow for any automations within Jira for backups.  Does anyone know if there's any way to accomplish this without having to download an app?

*If this isn't possible without the use of an app, that's all I need to know and will work to submit a request for one. That said, any suggestions on the best one that would meet our needs above would be appreciated. 

Thanks in advance!

MT

[Move Work Forward]

Hi @Mike Thomas ,

Another approach could be (it is not really an automation):

- Create a component for each person

- Make each person the owner of the component

- Make the default assign as a component owner

- When person is away - change the component owner

- When the issue is created - ensure the right component is selected.

And, I do agree, if the app does it - go for it :)

It is a workaround, not a good solution.

Regards,
Leo

[Fabian Lim]

Hi @Mike Thomas

To be honest, you will be better off by just purchasing the app via the marketplace.  The top ones in the search will do the job for you.  Having to build this with automations and calendars is just a waste of time and effort.  Focus on real value instead.

Regards,

Fabian