Product Spotlight: Getting Started with Jira Service Management

[Emily Dang]

Welcome to the first Product Spotlight for JSM June! Starting something new isn’t always easy, but new Jira Service Management users are fortunate to have the incredible Atlassian Community to lean on. For this Product Spotlight, we’re focusing on advice, tips, and tricks for getting started with Jira Service Management.

Atlassian Community, we want to hear from you!

This community is filled with experienced users who have a wealth of knowledge to share. What’s your top piece of advice for someone who is getting started with Jira Service Management?

Share your piece of advice as a comment (or show us with screenshots or a Loom video) below to earn the JSM June Getting Started Community badge. We’re also raffling off a team pizza party to one lucky person who shares their JSM wisdom. 🍕🙂

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To kick things off, here are some tips and tricks from two of our seasoned Jira Service Management Product Managers.

Meet the JSM team:

• Name: @Jehan Gonsalkorale 

• Role: Senior Product Manager, Jira Service Management (Cloud)

• Home: Sydney

• One song or word to describe your team: Jira Nerds

• Favorite superhero: Batman

• Name: @Gemma 

• Role: Product Manager, Jira Service Management (Cloud)

• Home: Australia! 🇦🇺 🐨

• One song or word to describe your team: Legends 🙂

• Favorite superhero: Do the Spice Girls count?

When talking to customers who are setting up a service desk for a team outside of their own, I’ve heard feedback that it’s challenging to know what the team needs configured in JSM. This is because you may not be an expert in how they operate and what’s important to this team, and the team doesn’t know Jira!

Here are some quick tips to help you collaborate with teams outside of your own team when gathering their requirements to help you get started in JSM.

1. Start with asking what the team is focused on and why. This will give you a bit more context on their role in the organisation and how they connect to other teams in the company.

2. Jump into a room or schedule a workshop to understand how this team operates and what’s important. This will help you translate needs into requirements to help configure the project in JSM. Your workshop can include answering these key questions;

   1. How do they initiate employee support today?

   2. What are the important employee services they provide?

   3. Are there any standardised processes in place?

It will take a little time to make sure you have all their needs and requirements, but the time now will save you time later when testing or validating the set up for this team. Share your feedback on what else is helpful when collaborating with other teams for JSM project setup.

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Don't forget:

• You can keep track of all JSM June activities and challenges here. ☀️ Commenting on three or more JSM June challenges will earn you the mega JSM June Community badge.
• New to Jira Service Management? Learn more here.

[Rilwan Ahmed]

Name: @Rilwan Ahmed 

Role: Atlassian Consultant

Home: Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

One song or word to describe your team: One man Army

To start up with, I always follow these: 

• Ask why JSM (to know their perspective about the tool)
• Explain what is available in JSM.
• Know what support is provided by team/Organization. Check for their existing tool/ticket flow to better understand. This will also help you` know different tools in the market :) 
• Learn about the process used for the Support.

[Pallavi Shirodkar]

Name: Pallavi Shirodkar

Role: Jira Admin

Home: Maharashtra, India

One song or word to describe your team: Shooters

To start up with, I always follow these: 

1. As a Jira admin, my role is to create workflows, custom fields, etc. to keep the JSM up to date and also guide the end users to use it more efficiently.

2. Explain the new features in JSM.

3. Also guide the customers who are using JIRA.

4. And last but not the least always stay updated with the new features in JSM.

[Jehan Gonsalkorale]

Love this! What's your favourite feature in JSM? 

[Pallavi Shirodkar]

That's amazing to answer!

The most favorite feature which I like in JSM is the dashboards feature. 

Because Jira enables users to create personalized dashboards that display relevant information at a glance. Users can add gadgets and widgets to their dashboards to track progress, monitor team performance, and stay informed about important updates.

[Vladislav]

Name: @Vladislav 

Role: Atlassian Consultant / Architect

Home: Brno, Czech Republic

One song or word to describe your team: No mercy! :D

1. Simple and straightforward request categories ( customers don't like too much reading and too much of "clicking" ).
2. Strictly defined process of which is everyone aware, once in time revalidated.
3. Patience with customers, and repeatedly explaining and emphasizing why it is important to fill out this and that.
4. Strong knowledge base.
5. Patience.
6. Even more patience or more coffe and than more patience.

[Jehan Gonsalkorale]

Love this, @Vladislav , sounds like you have loads of experience (and patience!). 

I'd love to hear more about the things that you have to repeatedly explain to customers. What does that look like? 

[Vladislav]

Hey @Jehan Gonsalkorale

Mainly it was when we transformed EUS from Jira software to JSM and every employee/customer complained that they could not find the proper link to the portal.

Another case for example was that a lot of people don't read, literally anything (description of portals, description of requests, notes under the fields) And you need to learn them that it is for them and for their better experience with services.

With reading is connected using of knowledge base, you can have as detailed and tuned up knowledge base as you want but it is useless if customers don't want to read it and don't want to use selfcare :D

Asking for relevant feadback and rating with start is another story, we prepared the automation which notify the customers and urge them for feed back, what do you think do we have any? :D

So you end with rebuilding the processes and with repeating everything, everything with paitence, customer is everything you have and their experience should not be pain.

[Jehan Gonsalkorale]

Totally agree! It's all about making sure customers have a great user experience. If you design things with that in mind, everything else falls into place! 

[Amanda Barber]

I'm just getting started with JSM. We use Zendesk for our other product but are planning to use JSM for a new product we're rolling out. So far, I've found it simple to set up and I'm excited to get it in front of customers in the coming months!

[Manoj Gangwar]

Name: Manoj Kumar

Role: Jira Admin

Home: Delhi NCR, India

One song or word to describe your team: One Man Army

[Brant Schroeder]

• Name: @Brant Schroeder 

• Role: Director

• Home: USA 

• One song or word to describe your team: Immigrant Song

• Favorite superhero: Superman

[Rebekka Heilmann _viadee_]

I am currently moving a customer from a really, really, really old Ticketing solution to JSM. I initially was going to analyse the old processes and document them to start from there.

However I quickly realised, that JSM works quite different in a lot of ways (especially with the customer portal compared to phone/email only). So know I talk about the process but right away design a new one around JSM rather than wasting time on the old system.

This took some time until they understood most concepts but we're getting there :) I love that they now start to question their old workflows and processes without me even asking. 

[Fabio Racobaldo _Herzum_]

Name: @Fabio Racobaldo _Herzum_ 

Role: Atlassian Consultant / Architect

Home: Italy 

One song or word to describe your team: Revenant :)

Favorite superhero: Superman

[Ciara TN]

Name: @Ciara TN 

Role: Atlassian Consultant

Home: Sweden 

One song or word to describe your team: Effective

To start up with, I always ask these: 

• What their pain points are with their current situation/product
• What is their expectations for the solution
• What their current process looks like

I find asking these I can get an understanding of how the will benefit with JSM and be able to set expectations. 

[Stephen_Lugton]

Name: @Stephen_Lugton 

Role: Agile Delivery Manager / Jira admin

Home: London

One song or word to describe your team: Living on a Prayer by Jon Bon Jovi

Favourite superhero: 

My main advice is:

Don't try to use one JSM project for different purposes.

We're working with a company in India and have set up syncing with them so that we can see change requests and incidents that they raise that relate to our product. 

Our product team agreed a different change management system with them than we use internally and gave their Jira admin access to our JSM as an admin, he promptly changed all the ticket layouts and removed fields that our automation relied on. 

It took me a day to fix everything after I kicked him off and Product complained to the CTO that I'd messed up what they were doing. 

The CTO told them where to stick their complaints and Product created a new JSM project they could use (they have no experienced Jira admins so I had to fix it for them since IT support had been told not to touch it)

[Andy Gladstone]

Name: @Andy Gladstone 

Role: COO/Atlassian Confluence Admin

Home: New York City, NY

One song or word to describe your team: Burn it Down (Linkin Park)

Favourite superhero: Wolverine

My go-to advice: Make sure that you link your Confluence Knowledgebase to JSM. I can't do  a better job than Atlassian themselves illustrating this, so here it is paraphrased from Atlassian's website.

Confluence gives your team a place to centralize and organize all customer-facing (or employee-facing) FAQs and documentation, and a private workspace where your team can share best practices and institutional knowledge. That way, no one ever starts from scratch; everyone is equipped with insights from past work, and customers receive standardized answers that the whole team has reviewed.

Once you link your service desk project to a knowledge base, the articles you publish in the knowledge base will automatically display in your service desk's knowledge base. This improves your customer experience by surfacing answers more quickly and, in some cases, without ever having to ask for help.

End BSM with a little TLC from your KB.

[Fabian Lim]

• Name: @Fabian Lim 

• Role: Director, ITSM Practice

• Home: Toronto

• One song or word to describe your team: Don't Stop Believing

• Favorite superhero: Spiderman

• Advice: Learn how to leverage Asset Management with the JSM Premium Tier. Jira Asset Management was initially created to track assets/employees, but it can be a very powerful tool that you can leverage for automation.  In this webinar I explain how you can leverage Asset Custom Fields to automate Onboarding tasks based on the roles of the employees. (Link: https://contegix.com/events/automating-itsm-workflows-webinar-contegix) 

[Jean-Marc Du]

Name: @Jean-marc DU

Role: Atlassian Consultant

Home: Switzerland

One song or word to describe your team: Get the work done

Favourite superhero: Sangoku

[Vronik]

Name: @vronik  

Role: Project Manager

Home: Zaragoza, Spain

One song or word to describe your team: I've Got The Power

Favourite superhero: Wonder Woman

JSM is a fantastic tool to be able to distribute the work of a user service center, manage incidents properly and be able to have very organized sla's according to their configuration, in addition to the ease of creating reports and tables. of controls.
For me, it is truly an excellent tool, but you have to do everything possible to get to know it in depth to be able to take advantage of its full potential.

[Vignesh Jayagopal]

• Name: @Vignesh Jayagopal 

• Role: JIRA consultant

• Home: Dubai

• One song or word to describe your team:  Fighters

• Favorite superhero: Iron Man

[Summer Hogan]

Name:  @Summer_Hogan

Role: SAFe Product Owner

Home: Gilbert, AZ, USA

Favorite Superhero: Ms. Marvel

One song or word to describe your team: We are the Champions

1. I am completely new to JSM so I'm looking for advice and the stuff above rocks! 

[Jehan Gonsalkorale]

Great to see you found it useful! If you have any questions, just post them as a response here and otherwise we can book some time to help you. :) 

[Susan Waldrip]

Name: @Susan Waldrip 

Role: JSM Admin, Programmer/Analyst

Home: New Mexico, US

One song or word to describe your team: Collaborative

Favorite superhero: Wonder Woman (Gen1 and Gen2!)

Advice: Learn how to backup and restore at whatever admin level you're responsible for. When you're working with your users and customers to understand what happened, be curious rather than nervous or frustrated -- ask questions, put them at ease, and let them know you're here to help. It really pays off!

[Sam Nadarajan]

• Name: Sam Nadarajan

• Role: Atlassian Business Lead & KL&A

• Home: USA

• One song or word to describe your team: Full-Stack

• Favorite superhero: Captain America

Advice: It's okay to have multiple request types on your customer portal - too often I run into organizations that want a single form for all support requests to go through, and then have the service desk figure out how to route it. But in reality, what ends up happening is that we add more dropdowns to a single form instead of multiple request types - negating the value add.

I liken having multiple request types/forms for customers that are highly descriptive to going to a restaurant and receiving a menu. When was the last time you went to a restaurant with no menu? The menu offers guidance on the restaurant's offerings - helping the customer (you) narrow your choices. Obviously there are upper limits (I've been there with having too many options on a menu) but it still helps!

[Susan Waldrip]

Good points, @Sam Nadarajan ! Have multiple (but not too many) request types can also help your analytics, depending on what's important for you to track.

[Aswin Raj D]

Name: @Aswin Raj D 

Role: Jira Developer, Specialist Application

Home: India, Kerala, Trivandrum

One song or word to describe your team: Collaborative

Advice:

"When getting started with Jira Service Management, focus on building a strong foundation. Here are my top tips:

1. Define Your Goals:

   • Understand what you want to achieve with JSM. Clear objectives will guide your setup and configuration process.

2. Start Simple:

   • Begin with the basic functionalities such as request types, workflows, and SLAs. As you and your team become more comfortable, you can explore more advanced features.

3. Engage with Your Team:

   • Involve your team in the setup process. Their input is valuable for creating a system that meets everyone’s needs and ensures smooth adoption.

4. Utilize Templates:

   • Use pre-built templates to save time and ensure best practices. Customize them as necessary to fit your specific requirements.

5. Leverage Automation:

   • Implement automation rules to handle repetitive tasks and improve efficiency. Start with simple automations and expand as needed.

6. Monitor and Improve:

   • Regularly review your JSM setup and performance. Use feedback and analytics to make continuous improvements.

By following these steps, you'll create a robust and effective service management system that benefits your entire organization

When setting up Jira Service Management for the first time, start with the basic functionalities and gradually build up to more complex features. Begin by configuring request types, setting up workflows, and defining SLAs. Once you have the basics in place and the team is comfortable, you can start exploring automation rules, custom fields, and advanced reporting. This phased approach prevents overwhelm and allows the team to get comfortable with JSM step by step.

[Shawn Doyle - ReleaseTEAM]

Name: @Shawn Doyle - ReleaseTEAM 

Role: Making decisions

Home: Colorado, US

One song or word to describe your team: Collaborative

Favorite superhero: Plastic Man.. no, it's Batman

Advice: Just start using it.

[Jake Good]

• Name: @Jake Good 

• Role: Support Engineer/ Jira Admin

• Home: Los Angeles, CA

• One song or word to describe your team: All I Do is Win - DJ Khalid

• Favorite superhero: Green Lantern

• Advice: The Sandbox is your best friend. Be innovative with your teams processes. Templates are a great starting point. 

[Mario GELES]

My advice for getting started with JSM is choose wisely your project template and keep it simple for users and customers. You should begin with a first vesion wich would be very simple and when people are used to eat, add some automation and new exciting features

[Gerson Prieto]

Name: Gerson Prieto 

Role: JSM Admin & Team Lead

Home: Barcelona, Spain

Favorite Superhero: Silver Surfer

One song or word to describe your team: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jv4O_XeHPyA 

As advise :
Always document the processes on the KB's and also be kind and investigate all ways and possibilities to automate stuff :)

[Valerie Knapp]

My advice is to create typically 2 JSM projects, one blank and one with the full ITSM template. In this way, you can show what is possible with all of the different features, but start off more simply, adding and enabling different elements as the customer is ready.

Another thing I like to do is, if you are an Atlassian Partner, is to have a OneAtlassian demo site, where you can see worked examples of things like automations which also work with Assets. I think this can also be a powerful thing to show customers who are just starting out.

[vikram]

• Name: @P Vikram Kumar 

• Role: DevSecOps

• Home: Hyderabad

• One song or word to describe your team:  Dangerous

• Favorite superhero: Hanuman

I implement Atlassian and DevSecOps tools on on-premise or cloud, support new technologies, integrations. 

Vikram P