Setting up service desk users

When you set up your service desk project, you add users to the project so that your team can start receiving and resolving requests. Your service desk has the following users:

  • Project administrators set up the service desk project and users.
  • Agents work on customer requests and add customers to the project.
  • Customers send requests to your service desk.
  • Organizations are groups of customers that are shared across projects.

By default, you need different permissions to manage different types of users in the project:

  • Jira administrators can manage users and licenses across multiple projects.
  • Project administrators can add agents from other projects. They can also manage customers and organizations.
  • Agents can manage customers and organizations.


On this page:

Add agents to a project

By default, project administrators can add agents from other projects to the project. Jira administrators can add anyone to the project.

To add agents:

  1. From your service desk project, click Add team in the sidebar.
  2. The agents are emailed a link to the service desk project and are added to the Service Desk Team project role.


View roles of team members

You must be a project administrator to view the roles of team members.

To view the roles of each team member:

  1. From your service desk project, select Project settings > Users and roles.
  2. Select the Roles dropdown, or search for the team member directly.

When a Jira administrator adds a new agent to the project, the agent is also assigned a Jira Service Desk license and added to the service-desk-users license group.

To view what license or group a user belongs to:

  1. Go to Jira administration > User management.
  2. Search for and select a user to view their profile.

If your agents need to collaborate with Jira Core or Jira Software users to resolve an issue, you can grant the Jira users limited access to your service desk project. Learn more at Involve Jira Software and Jira Core users.


Remove agents from a project

You must be a project administrator to remove an agent from a project.

To remove an agent from a project:

  1. From your service desk project, select Project settings > Users and roles.
  2. Hover over the user or group you'd like to remove from the Service Desk Team project role, then click the trash can icon to the right.


Unlicense agents

Jira administrators can remove an agent's license.

To unlicense an agent:

  1. Go to Jira administration > User management.
  2. Select the user.
  3. Under the Actions column, choose Edit user groups, then remove them from the Jira-service-desk-users group.


What is a customer?

Customers are people who can send requests to your service desk via the portal or email. How people become customers depends on your project's customer permissions. To see your customers, go to Customers from your service desk project.

Customers are automatically added to the list if your project is open to users with Jira accounts, or allows customers to create their own accounts. Customers who do not have Jira accounts are added to the Service Desk Customers project role in Project settings > Users and roles. Customers are also granted restricted access to the Customer portal only (not Jira).

For more information about how people become customers, see Managing access to your service desk.


Add a customer

Both agents and project administrators can add customers to projects.

To add customers:

  1. From your service desk project, go to Customers.
  2. Click Add customers to add customers to your projects.


Remove customers from a project

You must be a project administrator to remove customers from a project.

To remove a customer from a project:

  1. From your service desk project, select Project settings > Users and roles.
  2. Hover over the customer you would like to remove from the Service Desk Customers project role, then click the trash can icon to the right.

If the customers have Jira accounts or created their own accounts, then a Jira administrator needs to deactivate them.

To deactivate a user:

  1. Go to Jira administration > User management.
  2. Search for and select the user you want to deactivate.
  3. Under the Actions column, select Edit.
  4. Uncheck the box beside Active to deactivate the user.


What is an organization?

Organizations are groups of customers that can be used in multiple projects. When you add an organization to a project, its members can raise requests in the project and share them with the organization. They're also notified about the organization's requests and can view and search them on the My Requests page in the portal. Learn more about how customers share requests with organizations.

By default, you need the Service Desk Team role for a project to manage organizations in it. However, a Jira admin can restrict organization management to Jira admins by turning off the Organization management setting:

  1. Go to Jira administration > Applications.
  2. Under Jira Service Desk, select Configuration.
  3. Look for the Organization management heading.
  4. Organizations are managed from a project's Customers list.


Add organizations

Organizations are groups of customers that can be used in multiple projects.

You must be a project administrator to add organizations to the project.

To add an organization:

  1. From your service desk project, go to Customers.
  2. Select Add organizations.
  3. Add a new organization, or add an existing organization.

The organizations that you add display on the Customers list.


Add customers to an organization

Rather than add customers individually, you can group customers into organizations—which can be part of multiple projects. Customers can then raise requests in all service desk projects they have access to.

You must be a project administrator to add customers to an organization.

To add customers to an organization:

  1. From your service desk project, go to Customers.
  2. Select the organization you want to add customers to.
  3. Click Add customer.

If the customers are new to the Jira site they are given restricted access to the Customer portal only (not Jira). Also, customers are not added to the Service Desk Customers project role, because the organization can be used in multiple projects. However, they can still raise requests in all projects that use the organization.


Remove customers from an organization

Customers removed from organizations lose access to projects that use the organization, unless they have access through another organization, have the Service Desk Customers project role, or the project allows anyone to raise a request without logging in.

You must be a project administrator to remove customers from an organization.

To remove customers from an organization:

  1. From your service desk project, go to Customers.
  2. Select an organization in the Customers list.
  3. Find the customer you want to remove, and then click X to the right.


Remove an organization from a project

When you remove an organization from a project, its members lose access to the project unless they have the Service Desk Customers project role, have access through another organization, or the project allows anyone to raise a request without logging in.

You must be a project administrator to remove an organization from a project.

To remove organizations from a project:

  1. From your service desk project, go to Customers.
  2. Select an organization in the Customers list.
  3. Click Remove from project.


Delete an organization from a site

Deleting an organization does not delete the customers who are in it. The customers still exist on the Jira site and have access to any projects for which they have the Service Desk Customers role or access via another organization.

You must be a Jira admin to delete an organization from a Jira site.

To delete an organization from a site:

  1. From your service desk project, go to Customers.
  2. Select an organization in the Customers list.
  3. Select Remove from project > Delete organization.


Involve Jira Software or Jira Core users

You can give users with Jira Software or Jira Core licenses permission to view and comment on service desk issues without a Jira Service Desk license, only if Jira Core, Jira Software, and Jira Service Desk are licensed on the same Jira instance.

To involve Jira application users:

  1. From your service desk project, select Project settings > Users and roles.
  2. Add users to the Service Desk Team role.

These users can:

  • View issues, comments, and attachments 
  • Add and delete their own attachments and internal comments 
  • Watch and vote for issues 

These users can't:

  • Leave comments for customers 
  • View queues, the customer list, or reports 
  • Transition service desk issues 
  • Log work on a service desk issue 
  • Be assigned to a service desk issue 

Learn more about collaborating with Jira Software or Jira Core users.


Example of collaboration between Jira Service Desk and Jira Software

  1. Martin, an IT service desk team agent, links an incident ticket in a service desk project to an underlying network problem ticket in a Jira Software project.
  2. Andrew, a Jira Software developer on the network operations team, assigns this network issue to himself and starts working on it.
  3. After fixing the problem, Andrew opens the linked service desk incident ticket and leaves an internal comment asking Martin to try the network connection again.
  4. After receiving the internal comment, Martin verifies the network connection and tells the customer that the problem is resolved.


Learn more about managing users

Check out the following documentation to learn more about managing users and permissions:

DocumentationDetails
User managementAdd and remove users, manage users with groups, and manage access to JIRA applications.
Managing project rolesAdd and remove project roles and manage project role membership.
Enabling public signupAllow customers to create their own accounts by signing up on the customer portal or emailing the email channel
Configuring permissionsLearn how global permissions affect licensing, how project permissions are associated with a project role, and how to customize the default service desk project permission scheme.
Customizing Jira Service Desk permissionsFor advanced admins, find out more about service desk users' required permissions.
Resolving Jira Service Desk permission errorsTroubleshoot permission errors.
Last modified on Mar 5, 2020

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