Let's discuss your company's experience with Jira Service Desk

[Shana]

Hey community! I'm part of the Jira Service Desk marketing team here at Atlassian.

We would love to talk to any business or team that moved to JSD for their IT needs. Let us know what the process was like, whether you transitioned from email or another service system. Details are appreciated!

Also, if you're interested in having a more in-depth or private discussion with us about this topic, you can email us at svu [at] atlassian [dot] com

[Trevor Gordon]

We are a small company and have been using emails, paper and desk visits to manage bugs, change requests and features.  Then we would enter into our contract developers system for resolution.  I have come on board as an inhouse developer and will be taking over bug fixes and change requests.  I wanted something to manage this, one major requirement the business wanted was to be able to paste screenshots when logging a request.  Turns out not as simple as it sounds.

We have sharepoint online so I looked into what was on offer there, basic issue tracker which was all we needed, but paste was not an option.  We also are using Visual Studio Team Services(VSTS), but could  not find a way to limit it for a user level service desk.  So I started working with microsoft Flow so people could email the requests and it would then get turned into a work item in VSTS.  The images did not transfer well and I really wanted a site where the user could manage it.  That is the basic background, it went on for a few days trying different offerings in our price range (close to free as possible), none of which allowed the seemingly simple request of pasting screen shots.

It has now been three days since a google search indicated Jira Service Desk might be the answer to my issue.  I now have a Jira's Service Desk up and running, it took minutes to get that, I've spent a couple of days now linking it up with VSTS, using TFS2JIRA Synchronizer,
so I can pass the bugs, change request and features on.  They are linked so I can work with them in VSTS and know that users will be informed of progress when I update.  Did I mention the single sign on with azure AD?  That means I don't have to maintain 2 sets of user permission, there is some work there setting that up too.  Perfect pricing too.

Getting my head around Jira settings vs Service Desk settings vs Portal settings was a little confusing for me to start with, but didn't hinder too much.  I was able to resolve any problems quickly with the community or documentation.  

I am one happy IT guy, I would highly recomend this for small and large organisations.

[Scott Davis]

We are a specialised medical software company; I run the support desk which our customers call for assistance using our software.

We moved from a modified SugarCRM system (which our Sales team still uses) to JIRA Servicedesk, mostly to integrate tightly with our developers, who are using JIRA to managing their processes.

For that, JIRA ServiceDesk works well. We are able to track customer requests for Dev work on faults easily and clearly, and it has improved our prioritisation of maintenance and enhancement requests.

However, I have been disappointed in discovering that JIRA ServiceDesk seems to be so fundamentally designed to be used as an "internal"/"one company" help desk system. The fact that we had to purchase further licences for a plugin to be able to retain basic info such as client names and contact details was confronting. Now some of that may be due to the sales pitch from the local (Australian) company that sold and implemented our ServiceDesk arrangement, but it is surprisingly limiting. 

Add to that, the fact that the supplied plugin (AtlasCRM) is of fairly poor quality - at times slow, and with limited features - ServiceDesk ends up taking the blame for that. Unfair? Possibly, but the fact that ServiceDesk doesn't have these basic features natively is why we are forced to use it anyway.

So our experience is a mixed bag. To be honest, the most recent experience with AltasCRM changes forced on us, and the the poor user management options in ServiceDesk (can't change an requestor's/external user's email address? Really?) has all left us with bad feelings towards ServiceDesk, and I feel some regret for having been the one to recommend it to the company in the first place.

[Maarten Arts]

Hi Scott,

Last week's update of Atlas CRM was drastic, we have rebuilt most of the app to make it faster and more stable. Some functionality works different from before, but we've heard your feedback and are working on improvements.

In terms of limited features, we would love to hear what functionality you are missing. Feel free to open a service request where we can discuss how you use Jira Service Desk and Atlas CRM.

Thank you,
Maarten (Atlas CRM)

[Scott Davis]

I agree - AltasCRM is working better today than when I wrote that yesterday! It is also heartening to see quick action to resolve the issues I have raised.  Some of them felt like they would have been obvious in testing - though speaking from a software dev company I know it's difficult to see what is obvious to end users when you're deep in the system yourself, so I have sympathy.

As to the limited functionality comment: mostly its around the limits of the integration with ServiceDesk, I expect.  For instance, there is no way (that I am aware of) to deal with the idea that a single company may have multiple branches. We either list it as one single company, with all servicedesk tickets for all branches combined as one, or list them as many separate entities (we chose the latter). Either way increases overheads when it comes to the reporting and managing of information to the clients.

ServiceDesk itself is limiting around this as well: Either everyone is notified/has visibility of every ticket raised for an organisation, or only the requester.  There is no scope to deal with the idea that a manager/owner may wish to see all tickets without everyone else seeing everything.

I suspect all of this comes form the idea (as I said originally) that JIRA was designed for internal use, and needs to be modified to deal with external company info.