Tracking active Contractors in JSM with End Date reminders

[Keith Jones]

This is the use case I'm looking at:
JSM (Cloud) Enterprise - So we have Assets which aren't used at the moment.
We onboard employees and contractors through JSM. However, we have a set of contractors that typical have their contracts extended. So I'm looking for a way to pop up a reminder when the end of the contract is coming due. 

My initial thought is to list them in Assets, with some custom fields (status, start date, end date, manager, etc.). Then run automation once a week on all active status contractors and send a reminder to the manager by email. 

My questions (so far) are:
1. Does the automation run in my JSM project, and if so, how do search/reference the custom fields in the asset object schema?
2. Is there a way to run automation in the Asset app using AQL?

Any thoughts (or alternatives) would be greatly appreciated!

[Jenny Severin]

I have built something similar to manage onboarding of our employees. 

We use JSM automation to create an Asset when the onboard issue is created in JSM.

We have an Asset custom field called "Employee Name" that is linked to the onboard issue.  

In the onboard issue, we use "end date" to capture the Contractors target end date.  If the end date is changed in the issue, automation will update the end date listed in the linked Asset.  

One week before the target end date, the onboard issue transitions to an "Under Review" status and a task is created and assigned to the Manager in a separate Jira Software project so that they can confirm or extend the target end date. 

If the manager confirms the end date, the onboard issue is automatically closed and the off board issue is generated.

If the manager extends the date, the end date is updated in the onboard issue (and in the Asset) and the onboard issue transitions back into a "Contract/Temp" status waiting for the process to repeat itself 1-week before the newly given target end date.

The onboard issue can be closed <manually> sooner, if necessary.  

Please let me know if you have any questions. 

[Keith Jones]

So if I read this right, you leave the onboarding issues in an active status until the contract ends (or the employee is terminated)?

We do something similar, but we close them once the initial onboarding has been completed, and then we create a new issue (issue type Offboarding) when they leave. 

By having the issue remain open, do you leverage it in any other way? For example, do you update the issue when new permissions/equipment/roles are given to the employee/contractor?

Thanks for sharing!

[Jenny Severin]

Correct, we do keep the onboard issues unresolved until the contract ends.  We have a decent dashboard to show the details on these employees too.   

We are using a different request type for employee changes and those are kept current in the Asset Employee schema only.

[Keith Jones]

Thank you for the information. Quick question - how do you reference a custom field in an Asset object from Automation in JSM? What's the nomenclature look like?

[Jenny Severin]

There is an action available to "Edit Assets field attributes," select the Assets field and then choose the attributes to set. 

[Keith Jones]

I can see where to set attributes from an issue, and I can run automation against the AQL, but one thing I'm missing is how to return information from the object. For example, in my automation, I want to send a reminder email to the manager that a contract is due. In that email, I want to populate it with values from the attributes of the particular object. Do you do anything along those lines? 

[Jenny Severin]

Sorry, I have not set something up as you described so I'm unable to provide help on this.  Good Luck.  

[Keith Jones]

No worries - I think I figured it out. Putting it here for anyone else that comes along with the same question. It's listed in the documentation for Smart Values - Assets 

In my case, the email body would contain smart values such as {{object.Name}} and {object.End Date.shortDate}}. 

Thanks again Jenny for the information - I'm sure I'll end up using quite a bit of it as this project grows.