Round-Robin Assigning to only those in the list that are logged into JIRA

[Michael S_ Morris]

I have a support team of 7 members. I would like to use the round-robin assigning system to assign tickets to the next available support team member that is logged into JIRA.

I know with the manual list it will just hit the first person and assign and then go to the next person, remembering who got the last ticket. 

My question is, if a support person is not logged into JIRA (i.e. not on duty) how do I stop tickets from being assigned to them? I know I can manually update the list of available team members, but the team has flexibility on when they can arrive on duty so each day could vary. Makes a lot of work for add/delete from the list.

I also would like to stop assigning tickets after a certain time of day when all team members will not be on duty and just leave the tickets as unassigned. 

Does anyone have any thoughts on how I could accomplish this task. 

Thanks.

[Jaime Capitel _resolution_ · Accepted solution]

Hi @Michael S_ Morris,

I recently wrote a guide here in the community on how to combine a round robin in Automation for Jira with Out of Office rules, so that the round robin skips absent users.

You would need resolution's Out of Office for Jira Cloud to do this (here's the link to the marketplace). I'm the product owner, and it would be really interesting to know whether it works for you or which aspects are missing.

I think the most challenging aspect is your definition of active user. Being logged in is not something we can identify -- and it's also only a proxy for actual availability: a user may have an active session but be busy with a meeting, a training, or simply have their computer running at home while they have a day off.

That's the reason why we also created an integration for Slack that syncs the status with Jira. Users can switch their status on their phones and be online/offline to the effect of assignments in the round robin.

Please do let me know how it goes if you test it out.

[Michael S_ Morris]

Thank you for the information. I'm not sure if we are running Jira Cloud or Server. I will take a look and find out more, this is a route we could go down if we are using Cloud.

[Jaime Capitel _resolution_]

Apologies, I failed to see that this question was tagged for Server! Thanks anyways for accepting my answer, @Michael S_ Morris. You can have a look at the Out of Office app for Data Center by our friends at Akeles. I don't think they have an app for Slack, but the round robin fix should be replicable.

[Mikael Sandberg · Accepted solution]

Hi @Michael S_ Morris,

Welcome to Atlassian Community!

Have a look at this article that describe how you can do this based on when the request is created and who is on-line at the time. 

I used this to set up our round-robin schedule until we started using the on-call schedule in JSM instead. The issue with using the on-call schedule is that you would need a third-party iPaaS like tray.io in order to do it since automation currently only support one person being on-call at the time, and we have up to 4 people at times.

[Michael S_ Morris]

Thank you for the article. This has given me a way to split the ON/OFF hours. Now I just need to narrow down more conditions per day of the week and then adjust by time. 

Basically:
6am - 4 team members on duty.
7am - 6 team members on duty.
2:30pm - 3 team members on duty.

As an example.

I need to find a way to determine if a team member is actually logged into JIRA before it assigns the ticket. Not sure if that is possible, but I'm farther than I was.

Thank you. 

[Mikael Sandberg]

There is no REST API endpoint that will let you know if the user is logged on or not. The only way would be if you could access their computer and see if there is an active session cookie, but that would only tell you if they have logged on recently.

[Michael S_ Morris]

That is where my issue is falling. Since our start and stop times are flexible within a period of time of day, team members can start and stop at different times. 

I can set it by day to only assign to certain team members based on who is teleworking and who is in the office. Basically, team members in the office only get tickets when specifically assigned to them, all other it would be round-robin. 

I can set the assignment based on time of day on what would be a team member's "usual" schedule, we are creatures of habit, and adjust on a day by day or week by week basis. If I know someone is going to be off, remove them from the automation task. 

Is there a way for a Service Desk Member to set their status in the JIRA system when they come on and off?

[Mikael Sandberg]

There is, but you would need an app in order to do that. You could probably do that with one of the out-of-office apps that are available in the Marketplace. The other option would be to use the on-call schedule in JSM and the user would then put themself on the schedule or use the override when they are not available, but you would then need an external app like tray.io to do the assignment.

[Michael S_ Morris]

I'm thinking about the possibility of doing an assign/reassign automation.

Use round-robin to assign the ticket then dump it into a load balance assignment. This will allow the next person to get the ticket via round-robin, but the load balancer will assign it again if that person already has a ticket. 

Still doesn't work for a who is on/off, but we might be able to work with that during hours and if a ticket is assigned to someone that isn't on duty, another member can just take it. 

There are only 8 of us so we know when people are online or not.