Having automation natively available in Jira Cloud is a treat and we thought it would be an interesting discussion if everyone shared their favorite uses for automation. Then we decided that that was a little too big of a topic - since you can use automation for so many things. So, to narrow it down, here are a few of our favorite uses of automation in Jira Service Management projects.
Move Issue to Another Project
We run different JSM projects for each of our apps. Periodically, a question will come in on the wrong service desk. Automation doesn’t currently have a move action, but you can accomplish the same thing by cloning the issue to the target project and deleting the original.
We’re On It
Linking customer requests to issues in your dev backlog serves two purposes:
- It puts customer insights in front of your developers to help them understand what customers want and how new features will be used.
- It creates a record of which customers are waiting for upcoming features. You can then use automation to keep them informed of development progress (send a notification when development starts, finishes or is canceled).
Note that since this rule will be triggered by an issue in your dev project, but will update issues in your service project, it needs to be a global rule.
Share the Good News
Few things that service agents get to do are as much fun as telling customers that a long-awaited fix or feature has arrived. Fun as it is though, it can also be time-consuming. So why not let automation spread the word? You can use the same label/component that you used to trigger linking requests to your backlog, as a condition for which issues should receive the announcement:
Tip: Don’t miss the little dropdown that indicates if the comment is external or internal. The first time I built one of these rules I crafted a message for customers, then accidentally added it as an internal comment to 50+ issues.
Is Anybody Out There?
Perhaps the most obvious (and important) use of automation in service projects is dealing with stale requests. You know, the ones where the agent provided a fix, or asked for more information and no one answered. You can use automation to check if the customer needs further assistance and warn them that request will be closed if there’s no response.
Then you can add another rule to actually close the issues. The best thing is, you don’t even have to build these two rules. They are just a couple of examples of what’s available in the Automation Library – a collection of pre-built rules that you’re likely to want in all of your service projects. Simply, select the rule from the library, make any needed modifications, and turn it on.
Letting automation handle the housekeeping means your service agents will have more time to dig in on the issues that need attention.
Show Time Spent on the JSM Portal
If you’re looking for more easy ways to communicate with your customers, check out this new Clockwork feature. Go to Project Settings > Clockwork and select the Integrations tab. There’s a new toggle, that you can enable to show customers the amount of time that has been spent on an issue.
Still trying to debug that problem that a customer reported four days ago? This is a great way to show your customers that you are working on the problem, even if you don’t yet have any results to report.
Running an efficient service desk that automatically keeps your queues clean and your customers up to date is a win for everyone. Luckily there are tools to help you do it.
