We are starting a series а blog posts about our add-on Smart Attachments and integration of its capabilities into your JIRA workflow. We are going to present several case studies from our customers who decided to present their way of managing attachments in Atlassian JIRA.
Online HelpDesk Center
We have received this case study from the company using Online HelpDesk Center for communication with customers and JIRA for tracking the incidents from them. To avoid compromising the customer’s private data, we have replaced the provided screenshots with random user accounts.
The customer uses a HelpDesk center for supporting their customers and users who encounter any issues with website hosting, domain propagation or website operation. They primarily work with enterprise users, that’s why the support process deals with some bureaucratic procedures that are tracked in JIRA and are reflected in the specific workflow.
In brief, the workflow looks like the following:
- Customer submits an incident with the website hosting to the HelpDesk system.
- An operator creates an issue in JIRA and attaches a Word document with the description of issue on the branded template.
- Then the developer or system administrator starts investigation of the issue.
- All the logs from the server are attached as TXT files to the issue in JIRA.
- Once the administrator or developer finds a solution they create a solution report based on a pre-defined template and further attaches to the issue in JIRA and logs work spent on the investigation.
- Then the accounting officer calculates the work invoice and attaches to the issue.
- Finally, the operator sends the work invoice to the customer and upon receipt of the payment, sends the resolution report.
The workflow has some issues like the following ones:
- All files are stored in the issue as is without any categorization. If the issue is quite serious there can be more than ten files attached, so it becomes quite difficult to find the necessary file.
- Developers may attach multiple revisions of files during the issue investigation, so the operator needs to get in touch with the developer when does not know which revision to send.
- All financial documents such as work invoices can be seen by administrators or developers, which was quite bad from the manager’s point of view.
Not long time ago the customer found Smart Attachments add-on developed by our company. At first, the customer was not sure that the add-on’s capabilities would fully meet their workflow requirements.
After one-month usage the customer has found it quite rich in features. Smart Attachments add-on did not completely covered all the customer’s requirements, but 90 percent of them have been met. At the moment the customer is discussing a capability to automatically load some document templates into the categories with our team.
The customer has customized the workflow with Smart Attachments in the following way:
- added the attachment categories – Customer Request, Logs, Invoices and Resolution Report. Now files are categorized so employees can instantly locate the appropriate file or document.
- set the access permissions for categories. Now developers and administrators cannot view the financial documents.
- files can be attached to the issue via drag-n-drop.
- document revisions allow administrators to keep the issue investigation consistent, so operators definitely know which is the latest revision.
With release of Smart Attachments the customer got an excellent tool for customizing their workflows. Now HelpDesk operators can do a lot of things with the attached files, quickly upload them via drag-n-drop, categorize files and restrict access to them. Document versioning lets the customer keep multiple file revisions, so at any time they can get access to the necessary revision and document history.
To try the add-on just visit its page on Marketplace and install the latest version. If you encounter any issues with Smart Attachments submit a ticket to our Helpesk system or submit your idea to our User Feedback system if some function is not available.