Customer database

[George]

Hi,

I'm totally new to Atlassian, so please excuse me if I'm asking a totally obvious or frequently asked question: How does Jira handle customer information? Are there any best practices?

Background: We're a new/small software developer and I've been looking at using the Atlassian suite for our needs: BitBucket for Source code, Jira Software for tracking development issues, features & releases, Jira Service Desk as a helpdesk for customer facing issues. I'd hoped that Jira Service Desk and Jira Core would share the same customer database so we could use Jira Core for marketing and sales purposes.

From what I've seen so far, it looks like Service Desk and Core projects have independent lists of customers and customer info is limited to just an email address. I was hoping to keep a record of sales info e.g. subscription ID, expiry date etc.

Am I barking up the wrong tree with my expectations, or have I missed something obvious?

[Max Foerster - Decadis AG]

Hi George and welcome to the community! You're not barking up the wrong tree at all! What you're trying to achieve is perfectly possible with the tools, you just have to customize them according to your needs. That's their advantage: They are pretty powerful. And that's their biggest disadvantage, too. ;) 

Let me take your example about Jira Service Desk and Core. Jira Service Desk offers native support for a user type "customer". That is important for the way it works or how it provides your service of product support (or internal self-service for example).

Customers get access to the help center (sum of all service portals) and service portals (one per project) to raise requests, access a connected knowledge base (Confluence) and so on. On the other side are so-called Service Desk agents working on requests and other internal users (not agents) that can collaborate (for example comment) on requests.

Jira Core does not offer the distinctive feature of "customers". At least it is not called that way. But you could create such an access level working with permissions. It all depends on your requirements. Let me give you a (very, very) brief outline of how my team works with customer data and support.

We have an independent Jira instance serving as CRM (pulling data from the Atlassian Marketplace) and storing everything that is related to licenses, customers, etc in a "License" issue type. Which then contains "Transactions" as sub-tasks. But that Jira is enriched with lots of custom fields and calculated/scripted fields for summing up values and displaying other needed data we defined at some point. Don't forget enhanced reporting and charts as well.

And our Jira Service Desk (a different instance in our case but it doesn't have to be that way) is used for support and can access that data as well to display license details and other useful information in requests. For Marketing Jira is hooked up to a well-known email marketing solution.

So you have a steep learning curve ahead of you if you just came across the tools. But it will be fun. :)

I would suggest starting with Jira for managing your team's work and then expand from there. Or reach out to a solution partner and let them help you set everything up. It will be fun but it's not done in a day.

Best, Max

[George]

Hi Max,

Thanks for such a swift and thorough response. I'm glad to know that I'm on the right course.

I understand what you're saying about using Jira as a CRM, but I'm not sure it would work very well with our business model.

I've been reading about the Jira Cloud for CRM plugin and Skyvia, which I hope will address most of my issues. For instance we could maintain a separate customer database in Microsoft Dynamics CRM, which we could then integrate with Jira Core/Service Desk and other third parties, such as a billing platform or a well-known email marketing solution. That's the theory anyway!

Anyway, thanks for your help. I'm sure I'll come crawling back when my brilliant plan doesn't work.

Yours, George

[Max Foerster - Decadis AG]

Hey George,

I'm pretty sure you'll find a solution! Of course, you don't have to use Jira as a CRM, especially with Dynamics CRM already in place. I moved away from administering it years ago. But you already found apps to connect the different applications and using the REST API you will always be able to get data out of Jira and the other way round. Good luck with your efforts! :)

Best, Max

[George]

Thanks Max, Much appreciated!