Building an IT service management system is a lot simpler these days than ever. Most modern solutions offer a scalable cloud-hosted ITSM solution that can grow with your needs. A few, like Jira, push the envelope by providing you with a free version that you can use forever.
The free plan aside, you would want to optimize the software by considering the advanced features of Jira IT Service Management software. This setup involves integrating Jira Service Desk as the core system, Opsegenie for on-call scheduling, Statuspage for communication with end-users, and Confluence for knowledge base. All these are built into the Jira ITSM system pricing plans. Will this IT service management software meet your current and future needs? In this article, we will focus on the advanced features you can enjoy in the Jira ecosystem.
Jira ITSM Advanced Features
Having an ITSM system in place is critical if you want to get more value off your IT team. Instead of answering to calls like, “I lost my password,” “My laptop won’t start” or any other mundane issue, your IT team should focus on pressing issues that truly impact the product. A robust ITSM system can take care of recurring issues with automation and a self-service portal. That way, dev ops or IT support can focus their energy on moving the business forward. And this is where you’ll be glad to have your IT department aligned with your business goals.
For one, IT can focus on data analytics and generate insights that will guide you in making smarter decisions. For another, IT can crowdsource incidents and analyze potential areas that the product needs improving on. Based on a BMC study, 83% of organizations provide self-service tools to end-users. Having a solid help desk feature ensures your business is aligned with 59% of shoppers expecting higher customers standards today.
ITSM Best Practice Insights
Source: ITSM.tools
Designed byA robust ITSM system, nevertheless, goes beyond leveraging self-service. It should be agile so it adapts to different service requests beyond managing incidents. It should let you put up a process for change and problem management, as well as configure a system for asset management. All these while allowing you to scale the system to the business’s growing demands.
This is where you will find Jira IT service management software advanced features agile and scalable. Let’s take a closer look at them.
Overview of Jira IT Service Management
Jira IT Service Management is an ITIL-compliant ITSM designed for agile teams. It consists of the Jira suite of work management tools for incident management, collaboration, communication, and knowledge base. Deployed either in the cloud or via a self-managed host, Jira IT Service Management provides simplified pricing and feature set that are affordable and scalable with the requirements of fast-growing startups.
At the core of the solution, the Jira Service Desk allows you to tailor ITIL best practices that suit your workflows. Similarly, the service desk acts as a single place that pulls together your development, operations, and support teams so they can address service requests faster and with detailed accuracy. Jira IT Service Management can help you walk through the mines of bugs, issues, and requests during changes or rollouts.
Meanwhile, a rich ecosystem leveraging the Atlassian marketplace means that useful native and third-party plugins from mobile to security, and macros to document management are within reach. Atlassian is Jira’s mother company and the marketplace guarantees the functional extensibility of its products, which is one of the pros and cons of Jira.
The other Atlassian products you can integrate for a comprehensive Jira ITSM solution include Confluence (knowledge base), Opsegenie (on-call scheduling), and Statuspage (communication tool).
If you are always on the go or your team for that matter, you will find Jira’s mobile apps for both Andorid and iOS a must-have to ensure no tickets are missed or made to wait. The good news is, the apps are free to use.
Pricing is divided into three tiers, starting with the widely used Jira free version, which allows for up to three agents. The other two paid plans start at $20 per agent/month and scale to advanced features that we will be discussing below.
Detailed Jira Service Desk Review
Jira ITSM Solutions Top Features
You will find Jira IT Service Desk advanced features in all three price tiers. That means, even if you are getting the free app, you can enjoy the top features. This also assumes you are sold to the benefits of a cloud service desk. The plans are mostly based on the number of users and some additional bells & whistles like more storage, uptime guarantee, or better support for top of the advanced tools.
Let us take a look at the Jira IT Service Management advanced features.
Incident Management
As part of the Atlassian ecosystem, Jira Service Desk powers an end-to-end ITSM incident management solution by integrating with Atlassian’s Opsegenie, Statuspage, and Confluence. This way, you capture all incidents, set priority levels, resolve them fast, all while relevant parties are kept in the loop.
The software features automation rules on incident handling, such as escalation, assignment, categorization, prioritizing, and closing of tickets. Tickets are sent to Opsgenie where the on-call schedules of different teams are managed and the right party is notified via multiple channels. Through integration with Statuspage, you can keep in touch with customers on updates about the ticket. Finally, any post-incident learning can be captured in a knowledge base using Confluence for posterity.
IT support can easily grasp the context of each incident ticket.
Service Request Management
Formal user requests like asking for a new laptop or software are managed separately from incidents. These tickets are often low-risk and more structured, hence the process can be automated with clear approval stages.
Jira IT Service Management allows you to handle such tickets separately from tickets that require problem-solving or modifications. The software comes with default request types, from which you can group service requests by priority, date, or however you choose so. You can create or delete request types and customize the fields the closer it suits your workstream.
Moreover, you can organize the service requests by topic that leads the user towards the correct ticket form. A user, for instance, is presented with service requests for general IT help, VPN setup, new account, or device support.
Jira also lets you sort incidents by priority.
Change Management
When the ticket requires modifying or changing something in your existing I.T. infrastructure, it requires a separate workflow to ensure the least disruption in your operations. For example, a server upgrade can mean downtime to your customers. With an ITIL-compliant change management process, this event can be managed with efficiency to limit its impact. A change management system is needed.
Jira Service IT Management has the agility to create a change management workflow for specific business processes. For example, setting up a change workflow for database and another workflow for server hardware, yet another set of approval stages for office devices and their peripherals can be put in place with Jira.
At the highest level, you can create a “change request” issue type. You can then configure the workflow based on your approval and condition requirements for different change scenarios. User permissions can also be set, as in the case of normal vs. superuser or rank-and-file users vs. manager or C-level users. A highest-level user enjoys complete visibility over all change requests, their progress, and goals.
As a tactical platform, the Jira change management feature ensures project-level goals are met. From a strategic perspective, it ensures IT changes will not harm the business or that the impact will be at an acceptable level.
Key metrics are recorded in a change ticket for transparency and visibility.
Asset Management
An asset management system helps you account for the status of your assets, which include hardware, software, or information of value.
Asset management in Jira works via integration with your choice of Atlassian marketplace apps, which works for both cloud and self-managed plans. Put in place, the asset management system will help you deploy, maintain, upgrade or dispose of your assets if necessary. The bottom line–you do not end up with assets that cost you for nothing.
A look at the Atlassian Marketplace gives you a plethora of asset management apps that can easily be integrated with Jira. You have a selection by top vendors, vendor-supported, beta-version, and free apps. They all will help you create an end-to-end service by referencing, tracking, and tying requests with your assets right inside the Jira Service Desk system.
Furthermore, an asset management-integrated Jira IT Service Management adapts to managing assets that are not typically associated with IT. A company, for instance, can manage its insurance policies, vehicle fleet, or musical instruments, for that matter, using Jira.
Jira allows you to link a service request with asset management.
Problem Management
When incidents keep repeating, it requires special attention to find out their root causes and prevent them from happening again. This requires a systematic approach of investigating and recording the problem by the internal I.T. team.
When setting up a problem management process, it is important that the workflow adapts to your requirements. That means it follows your staff’s routine, including that of the agents and the IT. team. They should have the visibility to record problems and capability to funnel them into the workflow and incorporate the solutions into a knowledge base.
Jira Service Desk can be set up following an ITIL problem management process. It lets you configure customer- and agent-facing fields and screens. This way, agents can investigate, assess, and sort the problems based on categories that are meaningful to your organization.
You can also use the default problem management feature of Jira. It has an ITIL-compliant standard process, from opening a ticket to reviewing the case, to completing or canceling it and closing the issue. Field types include the summary of the problem, reporter, components, attachment, and priority, among others.
Jira Service Desk can also link problems to incident tickets to help you identify recurring issues. Likewise, it connects the problem with the relevant items on the IT team’s backlog for deeper analysis. Reports can be generated as well to identify key metrics, such as the number of associated incidents, top problems, and more.
Knowledge Base
Jira offers a collaborative knowledge base, Confluence, which you can integrate with the service desk. This enables you to provide customers and employees with a self-service portal. FAQs and recurring problem cases can be organized in Confluence in a way users can easily find the answers.
The knowledge base will help unburden your support team of low-priority and repetitive issues so they can focus on unique or high-priority issues. To help you get it up and running fast, you can simply use the best-practice templates culled by Confluence. But you can always customize the knowledge base in a way that suits your needs.
Confluence utilizes machine learning for smarter searches. The search engine can scour answers from different sources, such as request tickets, knowledge base articles, or service desks. Moreover, it lets you create runbooks, PIRs, and other shared documentation so stakeholders are kept abreast of updates.
The knowledge base can also act as a collaborative workspace where your team can share notes, discuss plans, and provide feedback to teams.
Confluence helps you create a self-service knowledge base portal for structured, repetitive, and common issues.
How to Get Started with Jira IT Service Management Software?
Getting started with Jira ITSM solution is a lot simpler than you think. The integration with different Jira products notwithstanding, the vendor makes it easy to set up an end-to-end solution. A free Jira version for up to three users even allows you to start using a complete ITSM system indefinitely.
In fact, pricing scales mostly to the number of agents, plus some bumping up of storage and vendor support and a few advanced features.
The bottom line is, you can immediately get it up and running at no cost if you are ready to explore the features.
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