Option to resolve an issue upon creation

[Daniel Guidry]

OK, I've been searching high and low for this for a solid day, but haven't come up with a definitive answer. We're nearly ready to start using Jira in production, but I have one maddening problem I've yet to find a solution for. 

A lot of our help desk calls are quickly resolved before we hang up the phone. This might be a password reset or remoting into their workstation to do something or some other quick task. Maybe you're entering tickets after the fact if you had some larger issues that had to be addressed before you had a chance to log anything. The problem is that I can't figure out a way to quickly resolve the issue upon creation. You have to first log the ticket, then go and open the ticket back up, click Workflow > Resolve, fill that screen out and finally resolve. For quick calls like a PW reset, it almost takes longer to deal with the ticketing system than it does to actually handle the task... not ideal. It's just way too many clicks and waiting to do something that should be quick and it really adds a lot of UX friction and cognitive load when you have a lot of them to do.

I've found a number of people asking about similar scenarios, but their resolution never quite matches my situation. A large number of people seem to end up using this plugin or that plugin to handle something like this... Surely this doesn't require yet another plugin?

Part of my problem may just be that I haven't used this tool long enough to grasp all of the ins and outs of the workflow system. It would seem to me that this would be an often requested function for everyone using this as a help desk tool since this has been a standard feature/need everywhere I've ever worked and in every tool I've ever used. Yet it seems difficult to accomplish with this system.

Ultimately, I just need a way to create a ticket and optionally have it either resolve the thing or not based on a simple checkbox or other flag. Ability to add resolution comments would be a bonus. If I could just have the existing 'Resolve' transition screen pop up after submitting, that would be great. Can this be done with just a modification of workflow I'm already using for incident management (which is basically the Jira Service Desk out of box workflow)?

Why is this so hard? What am I missing here? Thanks in advance!

[Glenn Morrow · Accepted solution]

We had the very same requirement and they way I resolved it was to:

• make a custom field called "Quick Resolve" (or whatever you like) of type "checkbox" with an option of "Resolve" or whatever you want to call it
• add it to the appropriate screen(s)
• add a transition called "Quick resolved" or whatever from your "create" or "triage" or whatever status either directly to "Resolved" or to an intermediary "Quick resolved" status. I found this later was needed as I was getting SLA errors if went direct to "Resolve" as the SLAs were not getting initially set correctly
• add an automation of WHEN Issue Created IF Issue matches: "Quick Resolve" = Resolve THEN transition issue (to resolve or quick resolve depending what you've done in prior step)
• if used the intermediate "quick resolved" status then add another automation WHEN Status changed IF Issues matches status = "Quick Resolved" THEN 1. Add internal comment "quick resolved" (this seemed necessary with the SLA problems) AND  transition to Resolved

Now an agent creates an issue, ticked the "quick resolve" checkbox and it automatically resolves on creation! :) We also use "Issue Templates for JIRA" plug in to create templates so in fact the agent selects the template if applicable (say "password reset") and it fills in the main parts of the ticket including ticks "quick resolve" automatically. I have also made a few other tweaks but that is basically it. Works a charm and our Agents are much happier.

[Daniel Guidry]

Excellent, thanks for the info. I'll keep this in mind as I get a solution in place. I might have to check out the 'Issue Templates for Jira' add-on as well. I was actually wondering if something like that could be done to further speed along commonly logged issues.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

The issues template sounds like a good fit here, but I'd also look at "canned responses".  The add-ons doing that a bit more focussed on helldesk work, rather than Jira in general, but can do some excellent one-click work!

(Not that I would ever think of Roy Trenneman's tape-recorder here...)

[Glenn Morrow]

>>> Roy Trenneman's tape-recorder 

Is there a plug-in for that? :)

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

I have it on my to-do list, but never seem to find time.  Always too busy trying to make sure Jen doesn't drop the internet again.

[Glenn Morrow]

LOL. Yea that was a great episode. :)

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

:-)  When they gave the internet to her, or when they realised they forget to get it back, several years later?

[Glenn Morrow]

Oh, I didn't know there was the later one. Something for me to look up on YouTube tonight. LOL

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Accepted solution]

You will need some form of automation (not off-the-shelf) to do this in one step, but it's certainly possible without add-ons in two.

Imagine a basic scenario (mostly to help me "think out loud")

• User rings agent, and asks for an easy thing
• Agent starts to create issue to log the call, leaving it open while on the call
• Call is resolved before the end of the call

This is not a scenario JSD is designed for.  It's an edge-case for Atlassian, one that is actually too simple.  A lot of organisations would skip it and do a 5/8 time thing (we log 5 hours of calls in an 8 hour working day because 3 hours are taken up with coffee runs, inconsequential password reset calls we don't log, watering the aspidistra, meetings etc).

If you do need to log everything, then JSD needs you to create the issue as a single step.  Without automation, you can then offer your agent "immediate resolve" or " more work needed" as part of the workflow, and really simplify the immediate resolve to a fixed resolution so it's a single click.

With automation add-ons, you can do that automatically based on a check box on the create.

[Daniel Guidry]

HA, that's great. I was actually thinking earlier "Surely with all of this flexibility, I can accomplish this one simple task!" I suppose that makes sense since much of the tool seems to be geared towards remote customer support with visible SLA's and end-user confirmation rather than simple internal end-user support and project tracking that's mainly for IT use.

For us, we're a fairly small shop -- About 75 on-site users across two buildings and a handful of remote users, but only 2 IT staff to handle them. This often turns into one of us running around the building(s) for a few hours to handle random issues that come up and then sitting at our desk logging the aftermath. This is really where the whole multi-step "create ticket, find newly-opened ticket, click Workflow, Resolve" process starts to hurt. So even if we were to write off the tiny calls like PW resets, this will still be something we run into on a regular basis.

At this point then I'd be happy to try out an automation plugin of some sort if that would help us to get this down to a single screen and be done with it. I was taking a look at Automation for Jira (and installed the trial) since I could imagine making use of a number of its features as we continue to build this system out. Also looked at ScriptRunner since it appears that you can build out some arbitrary scripted functionality that's not otherwise available out of the box. Would one of those be able to handle it?

Thanks so much for your input!

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Both of those choices are excellent for exactly this.

I work with the Echlin, so I'm a lot more familiar with ScriptRunner.  I have a very strong feeling that Automation can do this too, but I have not tried it, so I can't be sure.

With SR, I would

• create a custom field (probably a multi-check-box with only a single option for "resolved on create")
• have a workflow with "resolved immediately" as a transition
• set up a workflow fast-track transition that says "if box ticked, run the resolved imediately transition"

User clicks create on a call, and when the check box is selected, it ends up resolved, pretty much before they realise.

[Daniel Guidry]

Thanks, this should get me on the right track.

[Daniel Guidry]

Just want to follow up that I've completed implementing this using the Automation for Jira add-on. Works like a charm!

[Glenn Morrow]

Excellent! :)