The roof is on FIRE… network outages, broken processes, upset clients and employees. Each day seemed to bring more and more issues. Incidents were communicated via email, messengers (skype or teams) or verbally, without documentation. The end result is an endless loop of incident resolution without an understanding of the root cause, workarounds, accountability, and documentation. We had many internal meetings discussing possible resolutions to our incident management process but the fires were spreading quicker than we could react. It seemed like an endless loop without a light at the end of the tunnel.
We took a step back and looked at our internal products that have already been implemented. Do we have existing products that can accommodate incident management? Our software development team uses Jira for project management and Confluence for documentation. Further vetting Atlassian products, we tried out Jira Service Desk (JSD). We knew we had no time to test new solutions, users prefer email and the company is growing at 35% year-over-year.
Jira Service Desk was already installed but never used and allows incoming emails to be converted to service desk tickets. This is GREAT! We decided to move forward with a license for Jira Service Desk and put a process into place.
- Customers can email a servicedesk.com address for all internal issues.
- Emails are automatically converted into trackable tickets with a unique key, date, time and reporter name.
- Customers are grouped into organizations for transparency into requests across the business.
- Service Desk Agents link service desk tickets to other Jira Projects to be prioritized by development or operations teams.
- The linked tickets contain requirements, time estimates and Confluence links to technical documentation.
- The linked tickets are prioritized and eventually resolved. Public Confluence articles providing documentation, workarounds, and resolutions are created and linked to cards.
- The linked tickets are completed and the service desk ticket is updated.
- Customers are notified along the way.
- Service Desk linking to Confluence documentation allows customers to view the most up-to-date resolution documentation for reference
Although the process took a few months to build and a year to get everyone on board, we now have a process for incident resolution. The process gives full, end-to-end auditing and reporting we need for compliance purposes. Our process is still being improved today but the most important part is that the process makes sense to all departments across the business. Thank you, Jira Service Desk!!!
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