Ticket Types and "Sub-Ticket Types"

[Christian Jordan]

Good evening, all. I'm building out our Support Desk and my familiarity with other CRMs means I'm expecting the ability to have multiple levels when it comes to ticket "driver" data. I'm curious who has found a best-practice for implementing such a flow in their JSM platform.

For example, if I have a client submit a trouble ticket for a "problem" issue, I'd like to have "problem" as the 1st level or ticket type. In the submission form, I'd like to define a "next level down" from "Problem" to something else such as a the product they are using:

• Problem
  • Product 1
  • Product 2
  • Product 3, etc.
• Question:
  • Product 1
  • Product 2
  • Process 1
  • Process 2
  • etc.

If this is possible (or some kind of work-around that someone has successfully implemented, I'd be grateful for some feedback. 

Thank you!

-Chris

[Carla Ann K_ Rowland]

@Christian Jordan 

I suggest you use categories to recategorize your drill down levels.  The Categories can be used on standard issue types (visible on the Service Desk portal) and on sub-tasks.  I would create Tasks issues (standard issue type) and have them linked to Problem Parent as child parent).

Problem Parent:

(Create linked issue--task) Product 1 category level 1

(Create linked issue--task) Product 2 category level 2

[Christian Jordan]

Thank you Carla Ann. I'm still working through a few ideas but I do like this one.

I will explore this as an option. Be cool to have a sandbox to test, lol.

-Chris

[Joseph Chung Yin]

@Christian Jordan -

Welcome to the community.  In JSM, you do have the ability to create sub-tasks for your Request Type issues.  However, subtasks are not visible or can be submitted by the customers.

Question, are you trying to handle all the tickets all within the same project?  Or, are you planning to use one project for the initial intake and then handling the "subtasks" in different projects (i.e. another JSM project or even with Jira software projects)?  

There are different approaches to achieve those goals if needed, example setup automation rules to create or issue linking process.

Please advise, so we can assist you better.

Best, Joseph Chung Yin

Jira/JSM Functional Lead, Global Technology Applications Team

Viasat Inc.

[Christian Jordan]

Thank you Joseph. 

I was hoping that I could have a small pool of "top level categories" from which my clients could choose, then (and I believe these are "groups" at the top level) they could click on that group's button, finding multiple options from which to choose their more specific issue.

For example, if I had a "hardware" group (or top level category button), once clicked, there would be a list of different options they could choose from (printers, scanners, etc.). 

Of course, I also want to customize the forms for each of these--you know: just to make it more complicated. :) 

Thanks a bunch!

-Chris

[Joseph Chung Yin]

@Christian Jordan -

Welcome to the community.  In JSM, you do have the ability to create sub-tasks for your Request Type issues.  However, subtasks are not visible or can be submitted by the customers.

Question, are you trying to handle all the tickets all within the same project?  Or, are you planning to use one project for the initial intake and then handling the "subtasks" in different projects (i.e. another JSM project or even with Jira software projects)?  

There are different approaches to achieve those goals if needed, example setup automation rules to create or issue linking process.

Please advise, so we can assist you better.

Best, Joseph Chung Yin

Jira/JSM Functional Lead, Global Technology Applications Team

Viasat Inc.

[timothy lee]

Hi, Christian,

I, too, was looking at a way to create Categories and Sub-categories of tickets.  I ended up using Request Types and Groups of Request Types in JiraSM.  So, for example, I have about a dozen groups like Database, Email, Travel, Meeting Support, etc.  Then, under each one, I have specific ticket types - for example, under Meeting, I'll have On-site, Off-site, WebEx, Zoom, Meeting Issue, etc.

So, for your example, each of your Products or Processes would be its own Request Type.

This all works fine and dandy, but I have yet to find a way to pull a good report summarizing Request Type tickets.  I just want a simple count of how many of each Request Type per any given time period, e.g., weekly, monthly, annual, etc.  It seems like JiraSM's built-in Reporting is achingly basic - relying on the 3rd-party Plugin community to provide these kinds of features/functionality.
Unless anyone else has had good success summarizing by Request Types?  I've seen workarounds using the Component field as a hidden tracking field, or creating multiple filters (essentially of each Request Type), but they all seem kludgy to me.

[Christian Jordan]

Tim, I've been pulling data from Jira directly into Excel and doing my reporting there--which seems to work fine. I'm still missing that key ingredient though and end up every week modifying the existing ticket types in my Excel document to the new ones I want to use (and it's all manual). This gives me better visibility into my clients' actual issues vs. the generic ticket types that default in the system. A "service request with approvals" doesn't tell me customer sentiment or if I have a specific trend of service or product issues to address.

Thanks for chiming in--I appreciate it.

Chris