Service Desk Customer vs Portal Customers

[Bryan Ng]

Hi guys, 

I have a few questions regarding customers in a Jira Service Project:

1. What is the difference between a Service Desk Customer and a Portal Customer?

2. I noticed that if you add a customer under your Jira Service Project:

(a) With an organization attached - It does not create a Service Desk Customer role for the user under Project Settings > People.

(b)Without an organization attached - It creates a Service Desk Customer role for the user under Project Settings > People.

Are you able to explain why adding an organization does not create the Service Desk Customer Role for the user?

3. If I go to Project Settings > People > Add People > and add a Customer as a Service Desk Customer role, what is the difference from creating under "Customers" in the Jira Service Project? 

- I know that it would not appear under the Portal Customer List in the Admin Page.

- I also noticed they will be sent an email asking them to sign up for an Atlassian Account instead.

4. How should I add my customers to an organization?

- From point number 2, it is said that when I add a customer and attach an organization under "Customers", a Service Desk Customer role will not be added for that user.

- If that is the case, should I add the customer in first, and attach the organization later?

- Is there a need for the name to appear under "People" in "Project Settings" with the role "Service Desk Customer"?

[Johanna Malchow]

I am requesting a feature that will help with this so please vote and comment so Atlassian looks at it :) https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JSDCLOUD-11512

[Walter Buggenhout]

Hi @Bryan Ng,

Yes, managing users and permissions in Jira Service Management can get a bit confusing sometimes.

Let me try first of all to clarify a bit of the terminology. A service desk customer and a portal customer is essentially the same thing. It is a user with the permission to create tickets in a JSM project and view / communicate with your Service Desk agents through the customer portal.

An organisation is not in any way set up to grant permissions to users. It is a concept created specifically to allow customers to share tickets with all members of their team / company, yet again in the customer portal.

A JSM project can be configured to only allow access to specific users, but it can also allow access to anyone with an account on your Atlassian site or even open to the public. In those cases, adding users to the service desk customer role is not necessary and I suppose (but this is an educated guess) that this is the reason why users don't get assigned automatically to the service desk customer role, but only in people. It is in the people section that you can then associate them with organizations, as explained earlier to allow them to share tickets between them.

So, in short, if you want to grant people access to your JSM project:

• set up your overall project access first in Project settings > Customer permissions (access can be for specific users, for anyone with an account or public)
• if you chose access for specific users, add users to the appropriate roles in your project (Service Desk Customer or Service Desk Team)

If you want to allow people to be able to share tickets with their organization (or even do that automatically), set up organizations and assign people to them.

Hope this clarifies a bit how it relates and where things are different.

[Bryan Ng]

Hi @Walter Buggenhout ,

Thanks for the clarification.

I have set it up such that under Customer Permissions, only customers added to the project are allowed to create tickets in the portal.

I also added clients and tagged them to an organization immediately. This way, there is no Service Desk Customer role tagged to them under Project Settings > People.

I want to check if by doing so, will it still work fine?

Also, I'm still a little confused about the Service Desk Customer role. The SDC role is essentially just a customer right?

1. If I add them under Project Settings > People, it prompts them to create an Atlassian Account.

2. If I add users under Customers without an organization, it gives them the SDC role under Project Settings > People.

3. If I add users under Customers with an organization, it does not give them the SDC role under Project Settings > People. 

Just wanted to be clear how 3 of them result in different scenarios.

Understand that a service desk customer and a portal customer is essentially the same thing. It is a user with the permission to create tickets in a JSM project and view / communicate with your Service Desk agents through the customer portal.

By that logic, all 3 options are the same thing.

If that's the case, would my method mentioned above work? 

[venkateshprasad]

This is a good question actually, and even I am having the same doubt. There isn't a clear answer yet.

[venkateshprasad]

I just tried out a few things and I think I have an answer to this.

'Customers' section in a JSM project is a general basket which will have all the customers that has an account in the instance.

Within the JSM project settings, under 'Customer permissions', if you select one of the below 2 options

* Customers who have an account on this Jira site

* Anyone can email the service project or raise a request in the portal
Then, you don't have to add any customers exclusively into the JSM project with 'Service Desk Customer' role. By default, all the Customers under the 'Customers' section will be able to access the Customer Portal of this JSM project where they can raise a request, add comment, etc

However, Under 'Customer permissions', if you select the option
* Customers who are added to the project
Then, you will have to exclusively add selected customers into the project and provide them 'Service Desk Customer' role in the project. Only those customers will be able to access the Customer Portal of this JSM project where they can raise a request, add comment, etc, the rest of the customers under the 'Customers' section will get 'You do not have permission to view this Portal.' when they access the customer portal of this JSM project.