SubTasks on Jira Service Desk

[Joel]

In our enterprise roll out of service desk we've run into scenarios where requests have multiple sub-tasks or components that relate to the the parent task. For instance if you are moving a series of workstations or installing to multiple locations for a whole team. This would be easily accomplished if the requester had the ability to add sub-tasks to the the main task. Each sub-task might include a workstation ID, Hostname, user, new location... etc. Jira is absurdly flexible when it comes to issues and the fields supported but the only way to make this happen is to provide access to the full Jira interface which is defeats the self service model. Has anyone else run into this situation and how was it overcome?

[Susan Hauth _Jira Queen_]

Hi Joel,

Sub-tasks can be added by the agents to an existing request.  But they are not currently supported in JSD from the portal.

You can use automation or post-functions to create a standard set of sub-tasks based on a request.

Hope that helps

Susan

[Joel]

Thanks Susan for the quick reply. I understand they aren't supported out on the portal. I thought about automation but i don't know how you would automate the creation of a series of subtasks that would be different on a case by case by case basis. Take the example I gave in my post. If we're moving workstation of a group of 30 users. I want to be able to track their workstation id's old and new, their username, and their location id's old and new. How would i do that on the portal? 

The current portal is pretty limiting in this regard. ... that is unless I'm missing something here.

[Susan Hauth _Jira Queen_]

Hi Joel,

I think the thought is that the service desk should handle the initial request but that it would link to other projects or issues that would break it down further for other teams for example.

Susan

[Norma Romero]

My Company is looking into rolling out a Jira Service Desk. We wanted to know if the service desk has subtasks. If so, how do we go about adding them?

[Siobhan Flynn]

Hello, @Joel  or @Norma Romero  if you are still interested:

As long as you are using a sub-task issue type in the project's issue type scheme, you can definitely have sub-tasks in a Jira Service Desk project! But as already discussed this would only be on the Agent side, not on the Portal.

A way you could use automation to create Customer visibility is as follows:

1. 1st automation triggers upon creation of a specific request type X, the action is to create a series of sub-tasks against that ticket according to your needs.
2. 2nd automation triggers upon moving these sub-tasks to Done, the action is to post a comment back to the Customer to update them on the progress. E.g. "y and z (you can add in the issue.summary smart value here, showing the full name of the sub-task) actions are completed, we are almost done with this request". You could also be really specific about custom fields to support things like "workstation ID" and have these filling out into the comments back to the Customer. Obviously, you'd need to be careful not to spam the Customer here haha.

An alternative is using the Forms feature, to gather all of this data in checkboxes or drop-downs. Both Customer and Agent can 'reopen' Forms so I'd imagine you could use it as a go-between. Again you could have some automation in place to fire when the Form is submitted to send a notification or comment to either party and keep them both up to date on changes. (This feature was not available when you posted your question)

Hope this helps!