My Articles: My Articles

Let's build a two site support setup with Atlassian Products - part 1

Sat, 21 Sep 2024 17:40:45 +0000

I currently own two websites, atlasstic.com and jimiwikman.se. and I want to set up support for both of them. I don't want to spend a lot of money doing so, as I have other things to sink my money in, like hosting for example. So I want to set up a dual support using just one license. To make this a bit trickier I want to make it so that the two setups will feel and look completely different.

So let us plan this shall we?

So I have one Jira Cloud instance and one Confluence instance. The Jira instance is a premium license, because I want to play around with Advanced Roadmaps. I have a standard Jira Service Management on top of that and my Confluence setup is also a standard setup. I want to take advantage of all the Atlassian products I can, so I also have Jira Work Management, Jira Product Discovery, Compass, Bitbucket, Status page, Trello and Beacon. So I have a pretty extensive toolbox to play around with.

My Key add-ons at the moment are Refined that I will use to split the support portals, Scriptrunner for all kind of magic and Microsoft 365 for Jira for all email/teams/Jira combinations. I am also running BigPicture Enterprise and StoryMap for planning and for making some videos.

One Support project for both sites.

The core of the support setup will be one Jira Service Management project where all tickets from both sites will aggregate. This makes sense since there are not a lot of tickets flowing in. If I want to split this later on that will not be a big problem as Refined allow us to make these changes quickly and with ease.

I want to show open incidents and tie in Status Page to show on the portal. I also want to display Confluence pages to answer common questions, but as a content block and to show when a user writes a ticket. Since I have two sites I want to have this with two sets of projects and spaces.

For support, I want to have different types of requests depending on what the person submitting a ticket for wants. I also want SLAs to measure my response and resolve times as well as timers to help count down and remind customers automatically in different time intervals. I want to automate the status transitions during conversations so I don't have to change the status manually every time.

Let us plan the project setup

The first thing we need to do is to plan the issue types so we know what kind of requests we want to handle. While you technically can use any issue types as you will define the actual ticket types, there are some nice features built into Jira Service Management that we can use.

ITSM is a pretty good standard for must use cases and in Jira Service Management we can add those under Features in the project settings. So in the Work categories section we will activate Service requests, Incidents, Problems and Changes. We will also activate post-incident reviews but mostly to try that out rather than it being anything we probably will need. As I don't have Premium I can't activate Customer Service Management, so we leave that one for now.

Now that we have these activated we will get extra sections in our project that act as Queue categories, which is very nice. Since we have these defined now as sections, or categories really, it makes sense to also have these as our issue types.

The next step will be to map the different request types towards these sections.

Planning Request Types

The first thing we need is something for when people email in. This will allow us to separate these from other requests as the quality of these are usually very poor compared to portal created tickets that we can control the content from. We also need an incident type, so people can report problems of course. I do get some collaboration tickets also of various types, so we need something for that. Suggestions sometimes come in as well and we want those to go to Jira Product Discovery for processing. Legal is always good to have in case we get requests or demands from legal sources.

So, let us break that down into actual request types:

Incoming Email
Incident
Collaboration
Suggestion
Legal
General questions

I think that will be a good start and then we can build upon that later when we see the need for it.

Asset Management

I love Jira Assets and I work extensively with it in my role as Atlassian Platform Owner at Sinch, but in order to use Assets I need the premium version of Jira Service Management. At $47 monthly for just one Agent that is a bit much, so we will settle for the very limited Services feature for now. It is not a very good feature compared to the actual Assets product, but it will work for connecting tickets to the different parts of the two websites.

Create the project

Based on this we can go ahead and create the project. We could go for the ITSM template, but it adds a lot of things that we don't need that we just have to clean up later, so we go for the blank project for IT teams instead. In the screenshot below I had to add another Key since I already have this setup. I choose company managed because I like structure and order and I do not like team based projects.

Now t

Now that we have the project it is time to tweak some things and I started with the issue types. I decided that I would change them up a bit and this is the list I can up with.

As you can see I have created a new Issue Type Scheme since I like to name things so they look good rather than having generated names. On top of the four standard issue types that comes with ITSM (Incident, Problem, Service request, change request) I also added one for Post Incident Reviews since we have the feature activated. I also added Ask a question for more open type and then Consultation for collaborative things. Finally, I added one issue type for Email request as well.

From there we can now begin creating the request types and the forms we want to go with each request type. I just add them one by one and map them to the request categories and issue types.

Most request types end up in Service Request, but we get a few in each except for Problems. This is fine as problems are internal tickets.

Building the Request Forms

I like my tickets clean without too much clutter, so when designing the request forms I go super simplistic and then I can add later if I need to. I also like to use Forms since that allow me to ask for any type of information without adding a ton of custom fields.

For the request form itself I always make sure I have the Summary field, even when I work with Forms. This is because the summary is what trigger the suggestions from Confluence and it also ensures that I get variations in the summary instead of having them all the same if you choose to hide it.

At the bottom you can see that I have added a form to this request type as well, which we will cover in a different post.

For the Issue View I just have the Description and Summary in the top section for this and then I add the fields I feel I want for this request type. I did add tabs for this project and I will show how I did that in another post so you can see how that looks and what you can do with it. Adding the tabs require you to go to the Screens and this article is already a bit long.

Since we do not have that many request types I will just add two Portal categories, one for General requests and one for Incidents for now. We will experiment a bit with this in Refined later so we might come back and adjust this then. As we can place individual request types in Refined rather than just display the project setup, this is not as important as if we had not used Refined.

Now that we have our issue types and request types setup we need to create the workflows and set up the automations we will use. This is the topic of the next article, so if you like this so far make sure you keep an eye out for the next chapter.

This is a rather high level article, so let me know if you want me to dive deeper into a topic in another article.

Atlassian acquire Percept.ai - strengthening their ITSM products even further

Fri, 28 Jan 2022 09:02:00 +0000

Atlassian announced yesterday that they have acquired the small California based company Percept.ai, a company that focuses on AI technology to automize support flows, in quite impressive ways. This will strengthen the tool set of Jira Service Management with a new automation technology in the form of a no-code virtual agent that I think will add a lot to the Jira Service Management experience.

Quote

We’re delighted to announce today that Atlassian has acquired Percept.AI, an AI-powered virtual agent technology provider, to expand frontline support capabilities in Jira Service Management. This acquisition builds on our previous investments in AI and machine learning, designed to help customers efficiently deliver great employee and customer support experiences at high velocity.

- Atlassian Press Release

While Edwin Wong, the Head of Product Management at Atlassian, did not go into any details in the announcement, it is clear that this will be an important part of the future of Jira Service Management. I also think the acquisition of Percept.ai and their virtual agent technology will find its way into other areas of the Atlassian suite, and I would not be surprised to see an AI driven onboarding agent in the future!

I think this is a strong acquisition and an important one for the Jira Service Management product specifically and for Atlassian in general.

Price increase - but why the obfuscation Atlassian?

Fri, 10 Sep 2021 07:54:00 +0000

Atlassian are raising the prices for their cloud services on October 12th, which is perfectly ok. What is a bit strange though is that they for some reason seem to purposely try to hide just how much they are raising the prices. It does not say in the email, and the link takes you to the FAQ rather than the price list. A price list that only have the new prices and not the old for comparison. It is a bit odd.

This seems to become a norm for Atlassian lately, to hide information and prevent comparison. I don't like it and I don't like the direction Atlassian is taking in terms of communication and information in the last few years. Atlassian used to be good and open about their prices, but lately it feels that they are doing everything they can to obfuscate and hide information purposely.

I am not sure if that is because they have a strategy to adopt dark patterns in their UX to prevent a clear view into the actual costs (like airlines do), or if it is just some bad practice on their part implemented by someone who don't understand the customers.

For example, why not include the new pricing in the email you send out to the customers? You know what products the customer own as it is part of your database, so it is not rocket science to add customized templates based on product ownership. If people could do that 15 years ago when sending out printed catalogs that had your car and your color on the front page, then I am sure that Atlassian can set up a simple database that can send targeted content to product segments.

Even if you can't because you have not done the work, or your master data is crap, you can still send the entire pricing table, or at least link to it! Instead, you send out a letter that say nothing with a link to a page that does not have the pricing information I am looking for.

Not even the FAQ landing page that Atlassian link to have a link in the text or any form of directional que to the single most important question clients will have when landing here: What are the new prices. Sure, there is a link component to the left, but nothing that indicate that these are related to the new pricing structure. It's just sloppy and poor UX in my opinion.

Once you click in to see the pricing tables, you would expect to see the new prices and the old one for comparison, right? Nope. Atlassian shows only the new prices. If you are anything like me, then you never really pay attention to the actual price per tier, you know your monthly cost, right? So it would be nice with a place to see your new cost based on the new prices... but nope. You just have to wait for the next bill to see what the new price might be.

As you can see, the start plans are going to be shafted once more. So if you have one, hold on to it because it looks like they will increase the price on that tier with 750%.

Now, it is not very difficult to present the information on the increase in a more useful way. Just add the information on both the old and new price, along with the changes in both value and percentage. This is what Jira Cloud Standard looks like, for example, if you spend 2 minutes on it:

I think this could be a problem because the person in charge of the INFORMATION is a designer used to work with PRESENTATION. Having tables that look good is one thing, answering the questions of the people looking for answers is another. If you present new prices that will affect people's decision to remain a client or not, then you better do better than this Atlassian.

This was not good, so step it up.

Ok?

Atlassian Cloud changes Mar 30 to Apr 6, 2020

Mon, 06 Apr 2020 08:36:05 +0000

This is a repost from Atlassian's blog where the latest updates to the Atlassian cloud platform is posted. It is reposted here since the Atlassian blog does not have an RSS feed and so we can discuss the changes to the Atlassian Cloud architecture. You can follow these posts withe the tag "atlassian cloud changes".

Atlassian Cloud

Your cloud-hosted products are supported by the Atlassian Cloud platform. This section usually includes changes related to multiple Atlassian Cloud products, site administration, and user management.

Email users with suggested account changes

From the Change details button, you can suggest that a user changes their account details to make their profile more consistent and easier to identify. Read more about administering Atlassian accounts.

Give your users a Trusted permission

From a user's Permission options, select Trusted to give certain users more responsibility. These users will be able to install and configure new products on your site and invite new users themselves.

Claim accounts after verifying a domain

To start managing accounts on your domain, we’ve included an additional step that requires you to claim accounts after verifying that you own the domain. From the table on the Domains page, click Claim accounts next to the verified domain. Read more about verifying a domain.

Jira platform

Changes in this section usually apply to all Jira products. We'll tell you in the change description if something is only for a specific Jira product.

Need help with next-gen projects or service desks? Try searching for what you need

We’ve improved how to get help with your next-gen project or service desk. We’ve moved our documentation into Jira Software and Jira Service Desk to help you find relevant help to your questions.

To search for help content in next-gen projects or service desks:

If not already there, navigate to your next-gen project or service desk.
From the navigation bar, select Help.

When you reach out for help, Jira will suggest relevant content based on the screen you’re currently viewing. To find other help, use the search bar.

Next-gen: Epic panel in backlog

You can now manage epics on the backlog of your next-gen project via the Epics panel, similar to how epic management works in classic Jira Software projects. Changes you make in the panel on the backlog will reflect on the Roadmap, and vice-versa.

Find issues you've recently worked on

We’ve added a new Worked on tab to the Your work page. This tab lets you quickly find and resume work on issues you’ve updated recently. Head to Your work > Worked on to get started.

Improved navigation in Jira Cloud

We’ve created an improved navigation experience that always appears at the top of the screen, with clearly labeled buttons and menus to help you search, create, and resume your work. Find out more about our improved navigation experience and when you can try it out.

New issue view: Improved date formatting in the history feed

Dates in the history are now more consistent. They’ll correctly show when changes happened relative to your time zone and be translated into the language you’ve chosen for Jira.

Select your email notifications for issue activity from personal settings

Jira sends email notifications when certain activities occur on issues. In your personal settings, you can now choose whether you want these notifications. If you do, you can toggle notifications for issue activity when you’re a watcher, reporter, assignee on an issue, when someone mentions you, and when you make changes to an issue. Learn more about choosing email notifications.

Issue collector no longer matches the submitter's user session to make them the reporter

We’ve adapted our issue collectors to the Chrome browser’s new cookie security features, but have had to change how they work. The issue collector no longer matches a submitter’s user session to make them the reporter. You can still match them by email address.

To improve issue security, project and issue keys are no longer displayed in the success message after submitting feedback on an issue collector (unless the project is open to anyone on the web).

Learn more about using the issue collector.

Jira Software

We're rolling out a new type of project known as next-gen. By default, any Jira Software licensed user can create their own next-gen project. These projects don't affect existing Jira projects, shared configurations, or your schemes. You can manage who's allowed to create next-gen projects with the new Create independent projects global permission. Read more about next-gen projects.

GitHub app on the Atlassian Marketplace

We've partnered with GitHub to build a new and improved integration, which you can install at the Atlassian Marketplace. This replaces the DVCS connector in Jira's system settings. Current GitHub integrations set up under the old method will continue to work, but new integrations must be set up using the app on the Atlassian Marketplace. We're rolling out this update gradually, so it may not be on your Jira Cloud site yet.

This won't affect GitHub Enterprise integrations, which must still be set up via the DVCS connector.

Kanban boards just got faster

Is your team so productive, their 'Done' column is always overflowing? Too many issues on a board can slow it down and make you scroll way too much. To fix this, we’re bringing what we’ve codenamed “Fast Kanban”—a way to keep your board fresh and clean, and as quick as a flash.

The idea behind it is simple. The ‘Done’ column will now show only issues that have been updated (in any way) in the last 2 weeks, hiding the rest. Less noise on your board means happier teams. Any project admin can change the retention period, or choose to display all issues, if they prefer. Learn more

Quickly copy a link to an issue in your next-gen project backlog

When viewing your backlog, you can now copy a link to an issue to your clipboard. To try it out:

Navigate to your next-gen project backlog.
Locate the issue you want a link for.
Select More (…) > Copy issue link.

The link to the issue is copied to your clipboard, ready for you to paste into a Confluence page, Slack message, or anywhere you might want to share your issue’s link.

Jira Service Desk

New issue view for Jira Service Desk

The new issue view groups key actions and information in a logical way, making it easier for you to scan and update requests. Learn more about the new issue view.

Use keyboard shortcuts in your queues

Use keyboard shortcuts to navigate around your queues and get your work done faster. You can now move through issues, select their fields, and go to the issue view from your queues just by using your keyboard!

Remind agents to update empty fields when moving a request in your next-gen service desk

We added another rule to your next-gen service desk workflows. Now, you can prompt your agents to complete an empty field when they use a specific transition to change an issue’s status. The rule removes a burden on your teams to remember to fill in specific fields until they matter. It keeps them focused on the important work of helping your customers.

To learn more about the rule, and get an example of how to use it, check out our complete documentation on next-gen workflow rules.

Confluence

You can now create spaces on Android mobile

Android users can now create spaces on-the-go in the Confluence mobile app. You can find this action in the overflow menu (•••) in the top right corner of the app.

Your editing experience just got an upgrade

The new Confluence editor allows anyone to create beautiful, powerful pages effortlessly. Check out the editor roadmap to learn more.

End of support for nested tables

As we work on creating a more stable editing experience, we will no longer support nested tables - that is, a table within a list, block quotes, or another table. Existing nested tables will not be affected, you simply won't be able to create new nested tables.

We're extending editing improvements to all pages on Android

The editing improvements we made to blogs a few months ago are coming to the rest of your Android mobile pages, too. In addition to being faster and more reliable, your new pages are also responsive, optimized for readability, and have advanced tables. Some macros are still missing as we rebuild them, but you can check the list of changes and track updates to macros on our docs site.

Jira issue URLs are converted to smart links

When you paste a Jira issue link into a Confluence page, the URL is converted to a smart link that displays the page icon and the page title. This works if the Jira and Confluence sites are linked or if they are both cloud versions.

Convert pages to use the new editor

You can now convert your existing pages that were created using the legacy editor to use the new editing experience! Learn more

Confluence navigation just got better

Get to information faster with improved navigation – making what you need visible from anywhere in Confluence. Learn more

Portfolio for Jira plan macro

The Portfolio for Jira plan Confluence macro lets you embed a Portfolio for Jira Server and Data Center plan in a Confluence page. Join key stakeholders in the spaces where business goals are built and tracked, and share how work is progressing across multiple projects and teams.

Bitbucket

A merge checklist has been added to the right sidebar of the new pull request experience

In the new pull request experience, you can now view any merge checks via the sidebar located on the right side of a pull request. Merge checks allow admins to recommend (on standard plan) or require (on premium plan) specific conditions on merges for individual branches or branch patterns. Merge checks work in tandem with branch permissions to give your team flexibility and control over your development workflow.

New Code Review - Limit the amount of rendered diff content

Limits the amount of pull request content rendered in the diff and file tree to improve browser performance. Limits include the overall number of files and number of lines for the entire diff. Learn more

Diff comment replies limited to one level of indentation

In the new code review experience, replies to diff comments are now limited to one level of indentation, meaning all replies are still displayed but they are all at the same level of alignment. Along with the updated display, Bitbucket Cloud now auto-populates the @mention of the person to whom you are replying.

Enable git clone options at step level

You can now enable git clone options at a step level. Check out the docs to learn more.

Atlassian Cloud changes Mar 16 to Mar 23, 2020

Tue, 24 Mar 2020 08:56:06 +0000

Atlassian Cloud

Your cloud-hosted products are supported by the Atlassian Cloud platform. This section usually includes changes related to multiple Atlassian Cloud products, site administration, and user management.

Email users with suggested account changes

Give your users a Trusted permission

Claim accounts after verifying a domain

Jira platform

Changes in this section usually apply to all Jira products. We'll tell you in the change description if something is only for a specific Jira product.

Next-gen: Epic panel in backlog

New issue view: Add web links

Save time and add context to your issues by adding web links in the new issue view. Web links are links to any URL, but they appear prominently below the issue description where they’re easy for you and other issue viewers to find. Use them to link to important sites that teammates might need to better understand an issue.

We’re also moving all issue link types, including web links, into the Link issue button. Click Link issue to quickly link related issues or click the down arrow on the button to add links to web pages and Confluence pages (if you have a linked Confluence site).

Find issues you've recently worked on

Improved navigation in Jira Cloud

New issue view: Improved date formatting in the history feed

Dates in the history are now more consistent. They’ll correctly show when changes happened relative to your time zone and be translated into the language you’ve chosen for Jira.

Prevent cross-project commenting when replying to an email thread

This release ensures that the comments added to a ticket, sent to the specific project email address, will only appear on the ticket in that project.

Previous behavior

Bruce receives an email notification about ticket - ABC-123 from his next-gen project “Facilities”
Bruce comments in the body of the email, “This contract needs input from legal” and forwards the email to the next-gen project “Legal”.

Bruce’s comments would be added to the ABC-123 ticket in the “Facilities” project.

New behavior

Bruce’s email will create a new ticket in the “Legal” project.

Select your email notifications for issue activity from personal settings

Issue collector no longer matches the submitter's user session to make them the reporter

To improve issue security, project and issue keys are no longer displayed in the success message after submitting feedback on an issue collector (unless the project is open to anyone on the web).

Learn more about using the issue collector.

Jira Software

Next-gen: More epic colors on the roadmap

There are now 8 additional colors for your epics on the roadmap. Simply click on an epic to see its details, and select the epic color to view the new options available. Learn more about managing epics on the roadmap.

GitHub app on the Atlassian Marketplace

This won't affect GitHub Enterprise integrations, which must still be set up via the DVCS connector.

Next-gen: Create child issues on your roadmap

You can now add child issues directly on your roadmap. Just hover over an epic, click the + icon, and give your issue a name. Learn more about managing epics on the roadmap.

Kanban boards just got faster

Quickly copy a link to an issue in your next-gen project backlog

When viewing your backlog, you can now copy a link to an issue to your clipboard. To try it out:

Navigate to your next-gen project backlog.
Locate the issue you want a link for.
Select More (…) > Copy issue link.

The link to the issue is copied to your clipboard, ready for you to paste into a Confluence page, Slack message, or anywhere you might want to share your issue’s link.

Jira Service Desk

New issue view for Jira Service Desk

The new issue view groups key actions and information in a logical way, making it easier for you to scan and update requests. Learn more about the new issue view.

Use keyboard shortcuts in your queues

Remind agents to update empty fields when moving a request in your next-gen service desk

To learn more about the rule, and get an example of how to use it, check out our complete documentation on next-gen workflow rules.

Global create can select request type and raise on behalf of

You can now create a request on behalf of your customers and set them as the reporter. Use the global create button ( + ), then select Raise this request on behalf of and add in your customer's email.

Confluence

Your editing experience just got an upgrade

The new Confluence editor allows anyone to create beautiful, powerful pages effortlessly. Check out the editor roadmap to learn more.

End of support for nested tables

We're extending editing improvements to all pages on Android

Jira issue URLs are converted to smart links

Convert pages to use the new editor

You can now convert your existing pages that were created using the legacy editor to use the new editing experience! Learn more

Confluence navigation just got better

Get to information faster with improved navigation – making what you need visible from anywhere in Confluence. Learn more

Portfolio for Jira plan macro

Bitbucket

Pull requests now include a Jira issues panel

In the sidebar of the new pull request view, you can now see a list of Jira issues related to this pull request and Jira issues created in this pull request.

New Code Review - Limit the amount of rendered diff content

Show Jira issues assigned to the current user on dashboard

You can now see your assigned Jira issues on your Bitbucket work dashboard.

Recent repo cards on Bitbucket dashboard

We’ve improved the way you see your recent repositories by adding a new section on your Bitbucket work dashboard.