Jira Service Management - Troubleshooting why a request cannot be opened from the Customer Portal

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Platform notice: Server and Data Center only. This article only applies to Atlassian products on the Server and Data Center platforms.

Support for Server* products ended on February 15th 2024. If you are running a Server product, you can visit the Atlassian Server end of support announcement to review your migration options.

*Except Fisheye and Crucible

    

Summary

The purpose of this KB article is to:

  • explain the requirements which are needed for a user to view a request from the customer portal view
  • to list some of the most common reasons why a user cannot view a request from the customer portal view

Environment

Jira Service Management Server / Data Center on 4.4.0 and any higher version.

List of the requirements needed for a user to be able to view request from the Customer Portal

Situation where the user is a customer (and not an agent within the project)

Requirement 1 - the customer request type field needs to be set.

Any Service Desk request that was raised from the Jira UI without this field set cannot be seen/opened by anyone on the customer portal, because it won't be considered as a "valid Service Desk request". Therefore it is important to always make sure that this field is set.

(warning) Note that if a Service Desk request is created from the Customer Portal, or by using a Service Desk Mail Channel, the Request Type field will always be automatically set.

The screenshots below show an example:

  • of a request that can be seen from the customer portal
  • of a request that cannot be seen from the customer portal

Requirement 2 - the user needs to be able to access the Customer Portal of the project where the request is located

The ability for a user to access a specific Customer Portal linked to a project is dictated by the setting Who can raise requests? located in Project Settings > Customer Permissions, as shown in the screenshot below:


If this setting is set to Customers who are added to the project, then this user needs to be explicitly added to the project via either of the methods listed below:

  • the user needs to be added as a customer of the project via the Customers menu
  • or the user needs to be added to the Service Desk Customers role in the project via the page Project Settings > Users and roles 
  • or the user needs to be granted with the Browse Projects permission within the project via the page Project Settings > Permissions

Requirement 3 - the user needs to be involved in that particular request

A user is considered as "involved" in a Service Desk request if this user is:

  • either the reporter of the request
  • or a request participant of the request
  • or part of any organization the request is shared with
  • or one of the approvers of the request (if the case the request was configured with an approval status)

Requirement 4 - if a Security Level is used by the request, the Security Level Scheme needs to be configured correctly

We usually don't recommend using Security Levels with Service Desk projects, since they can have some impact with:

  • the ability for a user to view a request from the customer portal
  • or the ability for a user to search for that request from the customer portal via the My Requests menu. Please refer to this bug for more information about this issue.

If a request is set with a Security Level and this Security Level cannot be removed from it (for various reasons), then the Security level needs to be granted to Service project customer - portal access in the Security Level Scheme configuration, to ensure that requests using this security level can be seen from the customer portal.

Situation where the user is an agent within the Service Desk project

If the user is an agent within the project, then it is important to note that the Requirement 2 and Requirement 3 are no longer required, since they are bypassed by any agent.

For a user to be considered as an agent in the project, this user needs to verify both conditions below:

  • this user should have a Jira Service Management license
  • and this user needs to be granted the Service Desk Agent permission within the project (which is by default granted to users who are part of the project role Service Desk Team).

Most common root causes

Root Cause 1 - the request type is not set

For more information about this root cause and its resolution, please refer to the KB article A Service Management Request is not visible in the Customer Portal due to the empty request type.

Root Cause 2 - the request is set with a Security Level

For more information about this root cause and its resolution, please refer to the KB article A Service Management Request is not visible in the Customer Portal due to a Security Level set in the request.

Root Cause 3 - the impacted user does not have access to the customer portal associated to the project

This root cause might be relevant if the setting Who can raise requests? located in Project Settings > Customer Permissions is set to Customers who are added to the project. In such case, the user needs to be explicitly added to the project to be able to access the portal, and any request that this user is involved with.

One way to check if the user has the permission to access a portal in the project is to go to the Customers menu within the project and search for this user:

  • if this user can be found:
    • then it means that this user can access the portal
    • in this case, this root cause is not relevant
  • if this user cannot be found:
    • then it means that this user cannot access the portal
    • in this case, this root cause is relevant
    • to fix the issue, this user needs to be explicitly added to the portal (check the requirement 2 above for more details)

Root Cause 4 - the impacted user is not the reporter nor a participant of the request

To check if a user is a request or a participant of the request, open this request from the Jira UI, and check the following fields:

  • the reporter field
  • the request participants field
  • the organizations field
  • the approvers field (if the request requires an approval)

If the user is not part of any of these field, or not part of part of any organization the request is shared with, then this root cause is relevant. In such case, to fix this issue, you can simply add this user to the request participants field.

Root Cause 5 - The impacted user is a Jira Admin but does not have Jira application access

If the user impacted is a Jira Administrator (or a Jira Administrator), and if this user does not have any Jira application access (via any Jira license), then this user will not be able to open any request from the customer portal due to the bug linked below:

JSDSERVER-6041 - Getting issue details... STATUS

To fix this issue, grant any license to this user (a Jira Software or Jira Service Management license will work).

Root Cause 6 - The impacted user is not an agent within the project

As explained in the section Situation where the user is an agent within the Service Desk project, Service Desk agents bypass some of the requirements needed to be able to view a request from the customer portal.

A user will be considered as an agent if this user verifies both conditions below:

  • this user should have a Jira Service Management (JSM) license
  • and this user needs to be granted the Service Desk Agent permission within the project

If the user does not verify any of the 2 conditions above, then this user will not be treated as an agent, but as a customer. In such case, this user will only be able to view requests that this user is involved with (by being a reporter or a participant).

To fix this issue, make sure to grant a JSM license to this user and also the Service Desk Agent permission.


Last modified on Jan 8, 2024

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