Jira Service Management: 5 Comprehensive Aspects

Businesses today prefer tools that are competent in multiple tasks and deliver accurate results. They look for software-based solutions for Project Management, Customer Service, Interface Design, Issue Tracking, and many more functions. Jira is one such software tool that can manage the above processes on one platform and collaborate the data coming from all teams to provide a single source of truth in a company. Furthermore, this Atlassian Tool is one of the best when it comes to Agile Project Management, something which many modern organizations are implementing.

Jira Service Management is a part of the Jira ecosystem and is a go-to platform for IT firms. It serves as the perfect solution for IT companies that do not have enough manpower or resources to build an in-house ITSM(Information Technology Service Management) system. Jira Service Management simplifies Bug Tracking and promotes trust between customers and the organization with its SLA( Service Level Agreement) feature.

This article will introduce you to Jira & Jira Service Management and will explain the importance of using these Atlassian Tools. It will also explain SLAs and will list down the steps using which you can create your own SLA easily. Furthermore, the article will explain the use cases of Jira Service Management and will go through the steps of setting up a Customer Portal. Read along to understand the importance and implementation of Jira System Management!

Table of Contents

• Introduction to Jira
• Introduction to Jira Service Management
• Importance of Using Jira Service Management
• Measuring Service Level Agreements (SLAs) in Jira Service Management
• Steps to Create SLAs in Jira Service Management
  • Step 1: Generate an SLA
  • Step 2: Add Conditions to the SLA
  • Step 3: Add Goals to the SLA
  • Step 4: Customize the SLA Calendar
• Jira Service Management Use Cases
• Steps to Design Jira Service Management Customer Portal
  • Step 1: Select a Theme Card
  • Step 2: Customize the Theme Card
  • Step 3(Optional): Select and Customize the Theme List
  • Step 4: Publish
• Conclusion

Introduction to Jira

Jira is a Cloud oriented software tool popular for its Problem Tracking and Team Management properties, especially in the Agile Methodology of Software Development. It’s a subscription-based service that helps teams in achieving a common goal. Furthermore, from Backlog and Planning to Product Delivery, this tool allows you to monitor and improve the overall progress of the project. Jira also collaborates with multiple other tools to simplify Issue tracking and promote the launch of new software products.

Jira with its Version Management feature enables you to track projects between various versions and build detailed progress and performance reports. It also offers predefined templates which you can customize as per your company’s requirements.

You can learn more about Jira here.

Introduction to Jira Service Management

Jira Service Management is an Atlassian ITSM solution that supports IT, Development, Operations, and Sales Teams in managing tasks and solving critical issues. This allows your teams to deliver faster results and provide a great service experience for the customers. Moreover, Jira’s open platform prevents you from the complex processes of the conventional ITSM. This Atlassian ITSM tool provides a single source of truth for your business and allows your teams to extract the relevant data while maintaining overall consistency. This promotes a comprehensive overview of the company’s data and maintains a common understanding between your various teams.

Jira Service Management has seen great strides in terms of ITSM Management. Features like Simplified Workflows, Automation Rules, Unique Service Level Agreements (SLAs), and a Self-Service Portal have made this tool a favorite choice among IT companies.  Overall, this software will enable your IT, Development, and Sales teams to deliver exceptional Service Management on a large scale without silos.

To learn more about the Jira Software Management tool, visit here.

Importance of Using Jira Service Management

Jira Service Management will provide the following benefits to your business:

• Enhance Your Business: You can utilize the services of the Atlassian ITSM tool at affordable prices. Moreover, the time duration of implementation and consulting services is limited, so your company’s ROI (Return on Investments) will be high. Jira Service Management can enhance the business of all verticals. It offers an adaptable licensing packaging that can meet your business needs irrespective of the scale of your organization. IT, HR, Legal, and many more teams can quickly set up an Atlassian Service Desk that can scale according to the requirements. This tool provides great service experiences and safeguards your teams from the complexity of implementing the traditional ITSM solutions.
• Ease-of-Use: Jira Service Management System can be set up from scratch in just over a month, unlike most legacy software that can take up to several months to get started. Furthermore, you don’t have to be a technical genius to manage an Atlassian Service Desk. It offers a simple and engaging user interface and you can utilize its main functionalities with just a few clicks. Jira Sevice Management produces great results due to its ability to track work across the enterprise through a collaborative platform. You can also link issues across Jira and import data from different software development tools. This way, your IT support and Operations Teams have a better understanding of the bigger picture and inter-departmental requests, and changes will work at a higher speed. 
• Integrations: ​Jira Service Management contains Native integrations with the Atlassian Suite (Jira Software, Confluence, Bitbucket, etc.).This implies that you have a common platform for your IT, Development, and Support Teams to access and share data.​ Furthermore, the services of this Atlassian ITSM tool are highly accessible. You can launch Jira Service Management in the Cloud, Server, or Data Center to manage your ITSM software. You can also personalize your instance as the Atlassian Marketplace has 600+ ITSM applications available.
• SLA: Service Level Agreement(SLA) is a compelling feature of Jira System Management. It allows you to state clear demands of your customer demand and the type and quantity of products that you can supply. Moreover, it allows you to customize flexible workflows that suit your business plans. Apart from this, the Atlassian ITSM tool enables you to produce high customer impact with minimum risk. Furthermore, it minimizes the time involved in critical development and makes it easy to update changes with ease.

Measuring Service Level Agreements (SLAs) in Jira Service Management

A Service Level Agreement (SLA) is a set of terms agreed upon between you and your client that defines the services that you promise to deliver, the responsive service that you will offer, and the parameters for measuring performance. SLAs build a level of trust between your IT Teams and the clients. It is a foundational agreement that preserves customer expectations and set clear goals for your teams. For example, an SLA Contract can include a 98% service uptime or a response from support within 48 hours. Furthermore, SLA’s also contain the rules that will govern the compensation or proceedings in case of a contract breach.

Measuring SLAs can provide you with the following benefits:

• SLA’s define the actual terms proceedings that will be applicable in the events of a contract breach. This creates trust between 2 parties and removes uncertainty. 
• An SLA provides means for stakeholders to have a well-structured and documented conversation. This prevents the situation in which a customer is unhappy about unspoken expectations. Moreover, the stakeholders don’t need to repeatedly contact the service teams for IT issues.
• Defining priority tasks in SLAs specify the urgency of certain incoming requests. This allows the IT teams to focus on the issues that matter the most and require quick solutions.

Jira Service Management uses its built-in SLA solution especially for small companies that serve internal customers only. Moreover, the SLA standard module is sufficient in such cases. If Jira Service Management needs to pass the task to Jira Core Consultants or solve Field Repairs, a hybrid SLA solution will be required.

Steps to Create SLAs in Jira Service Management

You can easily create your own SLA using the following steps:

• Step 1: Generate an SLA
• Step 2: Add Conditions to the SLA
• Step 3: Add Goals to the SLA
• Step 4: Customize the SLA Calendar

Step 1: Generate an SLA

Log into your Jira account and find your service project. Open the “Project Settings” tab and select “SLAs”.Now, to add an SLA click on the “Add SLA” button. Write a suitable name for your new SLA in the field adjacent to the clock icon. Click on “Save“.

Step 2: Add Conditions to the SLA

IT Teams require effective response time measurement to provide the best possible services. However, measuring SLAs is complicated due to the slow-responding customers. So, you must ensure that your measurement systems can accommodate such exceptions. For this, on the SLA page, scroll down to the section named “Conditions”. To write new terms & conditions select the “Add condition” button present below the “Start counting time when”. 

Now, write down the required condition for SLA measurements. Select then the “Add condition” button present below “Finish counting time when”. Write a conclusive condition in this option. When the written condition will be fulfilled, the SLA clock will stop its measurement.

Optional: Select the “Add condition” button present under “Pause counting time when”. This setting is useful in cases when a certain amount of waiting is involved. This is shown in the below image.

Keep in mind that you can add multiple conditions and when any one of them is met, the SLA will start measuring time.

Step 3: Add Goals to the SLA

Generally, IT teams prioritize tickets in multiple ways and you should add these ways as Goals while setting up the SLA. In your SLA scroll down to the “Goals” option and click the plus icon. Now, you can choose a suitable time for resolving issues in the “Time goal” section. You can add multiple goals to your SLA depending upon your requirements. You can simply drag-and-drop these goals to sort them by priority. Jira Service Management tool will track your issues against the first goal whose criteria it matches.

Step 4: Customize the SLA Calendar

You can manage your calendar to highlight important tasks and holidays. Moreover, calendars are a great support tool for teams based in different parts of the world.

In your SLA, select the calendar icon present in the top right corner. Now,  select the “Add calendar” button and set a time zone and name for your calendar. You can also select the working days and customize time slots for each day. Furthermore, you can also specify holidays in the calendar as shown in the below image.

 Finally, select “Save” and Your SLA is ready! 

Jira Service Management Use Cases

Jira Service Management is popular for managing ITSM issues. Among them the following use cases are the most popular:

• IT Issue Tracking: Jira Service Management is popular in many companies for IT ticketing-related tasks. The Service Desk makes it easy to submit a ticket to IT, and your issue is carefully investigated and resolved. It is scalable and adapts well to your existing programs. Moreover, the Atlassian Service Desk can make the ticketing process a straightforward task with a small learning curve.
• Team Request Management: Jira Service Management acts as a single source of truth. This implies expenses of different teams can be easily available to the finance team on the Jira platform. Moreover, if team members submit a leave request ticket, they can use the Atlassian ITSM tool to create the request that fits into a Confluence calendar. This allows the managers to estimate the impact of the absent employees on their work progress. 
• Project Management: The Jira Service Management supports various areas that you customize and configure, both internally and on the client side. Combining these capabilities with automation can streamline the ticketing flows. The service that you can manage with it is product inquiries, complaints, customer comments, etc. 

Steps to Design Jira Service Management Customer Portal

This Atlassian ITSM platform is a place for your customers to learn about your products and services. Your portal is a reflection of your company and you must decorate it accordingly. It should be simple to navigate yet provide a rich user experience. Jira Service Management provides Theme Extension using which you can set up your Jira Management Customer portal with the following steps:

• Step 1: Select a Theme Card
• Step 2: Customize the Theme Card
• Step 3(Optional): Select and Customize the Theme List
• Step 4: Publish

Step 1: Select a Theme Card

Go to the Jira Service Management and select the Project that you wish to customize. Then open “Project Settings“, locate Themes Extension Configuration, and click on “Card theme”. You will get the option to implement a ready-made theme or create a new theme for your project. The below image shows examples of these theme cards.

Step 2: Customize the Theme Card

Once you have chosen a theme, you can edit various aspects including both top and bottom background, welcome text,  navigation bar, etc. You just have to click on the object that you wish to customize. Click on the live preview to view the effects of your changes. Finally, click on “Save”.

Step 3 (Optional): Select and Customize the Theme List

Instead of a card, you can also customize the List feature of Jira Service Management. Go to the Project that you wish to customize and in the theme configuration click on “list theme“. You can select one of the ready-made themes or design a new one. you can choose from 3 colors while creating a new theme and can add a footer to the list. 

Step 4: Publish

Once you have customized your card/list, select the “Publish” button.

Conclusion

This article introduced you to Jira and Jira Service Management. It then explained the importance of using Jira Service Management for your business. Furthermore, the article provided the step-by-step method of setting up the SLA for your customers. The article also dived into the use-cases of this Atlassian ITSM tool and the steps required to customize and deploy its service portal. The article presented an in-depth understanding of the Jira Service Management platform for you.

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