Best practices for IT teams using Jira Service Desk

Overview

This best practice guide is for IT teams using Jira Service Desk. By the end of this guide, you will have a working service desk project for change, problem, and incident management, and a few test issues that will illustrate the default service desk project workflow.

On this page:

Set up a project

In this step, you'll create a new IT Service Desk project.

  1. Sign into Jira Service Desk as an administrator.
  2. Select Projects > Create Project.
  3. Choose the IT Service Desk project type and select Next
  4. Name your project "Team Help Desk" (which will automatically fill in the project key field) and select Submit.

Your new project comes with preconfigured request types, queues, workflows, and reports to help you and your team manage incidents, problems, and changes. 

Set up your service catalog

Your new project comes prepackaged with Service Request, Change, Incident, and Problem issue types. The Service Request, Change, and Incident issue types can be associated with request types that customers see on the customer portal. Request types are a lightweight way to set up a service catalog in Jira Service Desk. In this step, you'll view the default request types and learn how to customize the request type fields and workflow statuses.

  1. In your new Team Help Desk project, select Project administration > Request types. You'll see the default request types and groups. Groups are essentially labels that let you organize the tabs and order in which request types appear on the customer portal. 
  2. To edit the name and description of a request type, simply click the corresponding request type name or description field and select Update.
  3. For the "Report a system problem" request type, select Edit fields. Visible fields appear on the request type form that customers fill out, while hidden fields are only viewable to your team. Click the "Select a system" visible field and note that this issue field displays all components in your project. We'll review components in the next step. 
  4. On the Fields tab, select Add a field to add the Linked Issues field and select Apply. You will be prompted to set a preset value. Set the preset value to "Linked issue relates to", so agents and other internal users can see all other issues marked as related to this one.
  5. On the Workflow Statuses tab, you can rename the default workflow status name to something more customer friendly (e.g. rename Resolved to Done). You can also select view workflow to view and edit the workflow this request type users (in this case, the Incident workflow for Incident issue types). We'll review more about workflows in a bit. 

Create a group for managers

  1.  > User Management > Groups, or > System > Project roles (under security)
  2. Create a new project role: Level 2 Managers with description "Users in this role can approve or deny change requests and request a second approval from Level 1 Managers"
  3. Add another new project role named Level 1 Managers with description "Users in this role can approve or deny the second approval needed on change requests"
  4. Go back to your Team Help Desk project. 

Assign component leads

In addition to the default request types and workflows, Jira Service Desk comes with default components. You can use components to group issues related to the same system or application, and assign component leads so each system manager stays informed. In this step, you'll view the default components in your project and see how an issue tagged with a component is created and managed.

  1. In your service desk project, select Project administration > Components. You'll see the default list of components. Simply click the component name and description to edit these fields. You can also select a component lead (e.g. the team lead who manages a system) and a default assignee (e.g. the team lead or project lead who will automatically be assigned to any issue tagged with that component). 
  2. Select Back to project and open the Customer Portal link from your project sidebar. 
  3. You can now create a test request from a customer's perspective. Select the "Report a system problem" request type. 
  4. Fill in the issue summary and description (e.g. Printers broken on level 3). Click the Select a system field to see a list of available options and choose "Printers". 
  5. Select Create to finish creating your test request, and then close the customer portal to return to your service desk project view. 
  6. From your project sidebar, select Queues and open the test issue you just created. You'll notice "Printers" in the issue component field. When you click the "Printers" component, you'll be taken to the Search Issue screen which displays all issues in this project with the same component. 

Edit your workflow

Now that you're a bit more familiar with how to service desk request types and components, let's look at editing the change request workflow to require two managers to approve the request before work can start.

  1. In your service desk project, select Project administration > Change (under Issue Types). You'll see the default workflow used for all change requests in this project. In this default workflow, a change request is created and then awaits approval. If the request is approved, the request is transitioned to in progress, and then resolved when work is completed. 
  2. Select Edit Workflow and select Add status. Name your new status "Awaiting Manager Approval" and leave the category as To Do. 
  3. Add another status named "Approved By Manager" and leave the category as To Do.  
  4. Select Add transition, and make the transition start from the new Awaiting Manager Approval status and go to the Rejected status. Name your transition "Reject by manager". Select Add
  5. Add a new transition from the Approved status to the Awaiting Manager Approval status, and name this transition "Request manager approval". 
  6. Create one more new transition from the Awaiting Manager Approval status to the Approved By Manager status, and name this transition "Approve by manager". 
  7. Drag the Start progress transition so that instead of leading from Approved to In Progress, it leads from Approved By Manager to In Progress. Your workflow should now look something like this: 
  8. Select Publish to finalize your workflow changes. 

Your change request workflow now requires two approvals before work can start. Note that you can create a Managers project role, and add a condition (e.g. User is in project role) to the Reject by manager and Approve by manager transitions. This condition will only allow users in the Managers project role to action these transitions. Check out Managing your workflows  for more information on adding statuses and transitions to an existing workflow. 

Success!

You now have a working service desk project with a customizable service catalog, components to better track issues specific to systems your team managers, and a new workflow for managing change requests. Let us know how you use Jira Service Desk for change or incident management by creating a ticket in the Feedback project in our public issue collector

Last modified on May 18, 2021

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