Free version setup - how to manage users versus customers

[Daniel Smitherman]

I provide and manage IT support for a community of about 50+ internal customers. I'm using the FREE version, which allows max 3 'Users'.

How do I configure JIRA to do the following:

- Anonymous ability to submit a ticket/case/request (no JIRA login required, no 'user' account required)

- Capture customer's email address on ticket submission

- Email notification of ticket submission - notifying customer and myself

The parts of JIRA that are confusing me:

- Request form field "Share With": does this person have to be one of the 3 registered Users?

- Request form field "Raise this Issue on behalf of": does this person have to be one of the 3 registered Users?

I've read through some of the relevant documentation, and tested various scenarios, but the more I dig in, the more confused I am.

Thanks for any help - including pointing me to relevant documentation for strategy to roll out a Free version of JIRA

[Earl McCutcheon]

Hello @Daniel Smitherman ,

This one goes pretty wide and there are a lot of concepts to cover for your questions so I've broken out each of the questions below into sections to make sure I'm covering everything and I know this is a huge wall of information and is a lot to go through so let me know if this clarifies everything you had questions about or if you have any follow up questions about the point I cover:

The first section looking at How to configure the following:

- Anonymous ability to submit a ticket/case/request (no JIRA login required, no 'user' account required)

Anonymous access is covered in this KB "Allowing anonymous access to your project" However as detailed in the KB it requires modifying project permissions which is a feature that is disabled under the Cloud free license, so you would need to upgrade to a paid license to to be able to modify the permissions and allow anonymous access.

BUT looking at the rest of your questions it does not sound like you are looking for anonymous access directly as this would only be a mono directional communication point (unknown user creates information visible to everyone) and it sounds like you are looking at setting up the traditional service desk approach of two way communications with end users that can send request in via e-mail.

So, Under the Free license you must either be taking one of the Licensed user seats as an internal user, or have a customer account created to be able to file a request in the service desk project.  and the Service Desk Customer accounts are what I am focusing on.

The internal users would be one of the free Service desk agents OR one of the core or software user, and Customer accounts come into play heavily here as well in your follow up question, but the Customers are External users that can interact with the Service Desk agents, but a customer account is not anonymous but also does not take up a license seat, and does have an account created, check out "Manage Jira Service Desk customer accounts" for more details.

So overall take away is a customer account is not Anonymous, but also is a free user seat with limited access to the portal for interaction with Agents only.  The following Service desk Evaluator resource explains this really well:

• JIRA Service Desk: Agents vs. End Users 

On the next question:

- Capture customer's email address on ticket submission

In Service desk as mentioned above a customer (the end user) is required to have an account to submit a request, and this can be done by an agent creating the account by inviting the user or enabling customer account creation automatically when a request is submitted by the external user, the later sounding like what you are looking for.

to do this check out the following three sections of the Documentation the first one covers the whole scope of how the customer emails will be received  "Receive requests from an email address" , and the second section covers account creation options for customers in the system such as inviting users as an agent "Add and remove customers" and the Third covers the focus of the configuration option on how the customer can be set up for the customer creation process "Customer permissions for your service desk and Jira site"  includes the option to allow for customers to reach out without a preexisting account and has the option that sounds like what you are looking for:

"Anyone can send a request without logging in - Anyone can send requests via the help center or email, without creating an account. If customers can share requests, then people they share with also become customers and can send requests. If you have a Confluence knowledge base that allows anonymous access, then customers can find your articles using search engines."

The next question you had is also covered in the three sections I mentioned for the previous question:

- Email notification of ticket submission - notifying customer and myself

but this should be enabled by default unless you choose to disable it as covered here "How to add customers without sending an invitation email" 

Then the follow up section for the parts that were causing some additional confusion:

- Request form field "Share With": does this person have to be one of the 3 registered Users?

No, this can be any customer, or internal user.  And depending on the settings you enable above, if you set it up so that "Anyone can send a request without logging in" a customer can add an email of someone to this section to invite that user to the system as a new customer.

- Request form field "Raise this Issue on behalf of": does this person have to be one of the 3 registered Users?

Yes, raising an issue on behalf of a Customer is a function that requires one of the Service Desk Agent seats, Customers cannot create a request for another customer, they can only share the request they created if you enable sharing.

Regards,
Earl

[Daniel Smitherman]

Hello Earl.

Thank you so much for taking the time to read my question and reply.

My main concern and confusion is about what you say here:

" or have a customer account created to be able to file a request in the service desk project.  and the Service Desk Customer accounts are what I am focusing on."

After reading your reply, and hunting around, I found where I add Customers. That was a big confusion until just now - where do I create a new Customer account?

Now I've gotten a few steps forward in rolling out this instance of JIRA Service Desk.

Thank you!