Managing multiple tickets manually can be tedious, prone to errors, and time-intensive. However, with advanced solutions like the Jira ticketing system, your team can automate this ticket management process. But how does the Jira ticketing system work? In this article, we'll discuss the Jira ticketing system in detail.
Previously, tickets raised by employees for app access or technical support underwent a multi-step process.
This approach was not only resource-intensive and time-consuming but failed to achieve its intended purpose of managing tickets timely to prevent work disruptions.
So, to address this challenge, ticketing systems were developed to streamline and simplify the ticket management process. These systems create structured workflows to ensure that every ticket receives attention and is resolved promptly. One such well-recognized system is the Jira ticketing system. What is it? How does it work? Read on to find out.
What Is Jira Ticketing System?
Jira ticketing system is a software developed by Atlassian. It enables your teams to create, organize, prioritize, and track internal and external Jira tickets.
Jira tickets refer to issues or app access requests raised by employees within the organization. They contain information, including who raised the ticket, what it is about, when it is due, and other relevant information.
Furthermore, this ticketing system helps your team handle multiple support requests coming from different sources or channels.
Imagine support queries/requests coming in from different channels—emails, phone calls, chat messages, and more. It can be difficult for your team to keep track of it all at once. This is where the Jira ticketing system comes in to help.
With the Jira ticketing system, each incoming support request gets its own ticket, neatly organized within the system. Whether it's an email from an employee or a message on Slack, the request is captured and converted into a ticket for your team to handle.
This streamlined approach ensures that no support requests slip through the cracks. Every ticket is logged, assigned, and tracked, guiding your team through the support process from start to finish. Whether it's troubleshooting technical issues, providing access to apps, or offering guidance, this tool ensures that your team can tackle each request promptly and effectively.
But how does it work?
How Does The Jira Ticketing System Work?
The Jira ticketing system acts like a digital to-do list for teams. Your team can easily create workflows to assign tickets to designated team members (responsible for handling that type of ticket).
These structured workflows further allow your team to keep track of ticket progress from the point it is opened until it's closed/resolved/approved. This visibility into ticket status allows your teams to identify bottlenecks, prioritize tickets effectively, and allocate resources to ensure timely resolution.
Also, it maintains detailed records/documents of every action (changes and updates) that takes place in the ticketing process to ensure accountability and transparency.
However, to manage Jira tickets more effectively, you need to familiarize yourself with their lifecycle. By doing so, you will understand which stages the tickets go through, and accordingly, you can allocate resources (IT teams and tools) to manage them as they progress.
Stages Jira Tickets Goes Through
Jira tickets go through 3 stages:
#Stage 1: To Do
When a ticket is created and waiting for action, it's in the To Do phase. During this phase, team members review the ticket, prioritize tasks, and assign it to the appropriate individual or team for further action.
#Stage 2: In Progress
Once your team starts working on it, the ticket moves into the In Progress phase. This phase indicates that work is actively being undertaken to address the ticket's requirements. Team members communicate, troubleshoot, or implement solutions to progress toward the ticket's resolution.
#Stage 3: Done
Finally, when the ticket is closed/resolved/approved, the ticket is transferred to the Done phase. This phase signifies that all necessary actions related to the ticket have been taken, and the task is considered finished.
Now, let's proceed further and explore the benefits of the Jira ticketing system.
Benefits Of the Jira Ticketing System
Given below are some of the benefits that you can avail by implementing the Jira ticketing system in your organization:
1: Seamless Integrations With Third-Party Applications
The Jira ticketing system seamlessly integrates with popular tools like Slack, Confluence, Bitbucket, and Trello. This integration allows your team to easily communicate and share updates, progress, and information related to requests or tickets with employees and other stakeholders within the Jira system.
For instance, they can receive notifications about ticket updates directly in Slack channels, eliminating the need to switch between different tools.
2: Provides Roadmap/Kanban View Of Tickets
With the Jira ticketing system, your team can visualize incoming tickets in a roadmap format or through a Kanban board. This allows you to quickly assess the status of your current tickets and plan ahead, enabling better prioritization and resource allocation.
3: Tracks Your Team's Performance With Analytics & Reporting Feature
This ticketing software has built-in analytics and reporting capabilities that provide insights into your team's performance. It examines metrics such as ticket resolution rates, priority ticket handling, and potential delays. By analyzing these KPIs, you can identify bottlenecks in your ticket management workflow and take measures to improve your team's efficiency.
4: Attaches Ticket Tags
The Jira ticketing system automatically categorizes and groups tickets using customizable ticket tags (labels). This feature helps your team to sort and organize tickets, making it simpler to identify and prioritize tasks at a glance.
5: Helps Resolve Linking Issues
Jira ticketing system supports the establishment of relationships between multiple issues. Your team can create sub-issues under a parent issue or link tickets at the same level. This feature helps in better organization and connectivity between related tasks.
After going through the benefits, you may consider implementing the Jira ticketing system within your organization. If so, you need to follow certain ways to ensure its effective implementation. What are these steps? Let's find out.
How To Set Up Jira Ticketing System Effectively?
Given below are some ways that you can follow to ensure effective implementation of the Jira ticketing system:
1: Establish A Portal For Employees To Submit Requests
Create a designated support channel like a self-service portal for employees to submit their requests. This will help ensure that your employees can submit requests with ease. By doing so, you can also save your team time as they no longer have to get involved in assisting employees about where to submit their requests and how to do it.
Additionally, you can create knowledge bases within the portal, providing relevant information like articles to address common issues. This way, your employees will feel empowered to find solutions independently, reducing the number of requests.
2: Categorize Request Types to Expedite Ticket Routing
By categorizing requests into different types, such as software glitches or app access requests, your teams can quickly identify the nature of each ticket and route it to the appropriate team for resolution/approval.
This practice ensures that tickets are assigned to the most qualified team members, reducing response times and minimizing the risk of tickets getting lost or overlooked. It also allows for better prioritization of tasks, as urgent issues can be addressed timely while non-critical requests are managed in due course.
3: Create Queues
Create queues where your team can view requests, their importance, urgency, and due dates. The queues organize requests by priority and category, as you choose. Your team can set up queues to automatically sort incoming requests. Or, they can manually adjust the priority of tasks and assign them to other team members if needed.
4: Follow SLAs
Service Level Agreements (SLAs) define each issue's expected response and resolution times. These agreements must be shared with both employees and your teams so that both parties know what to expect (regarding their request management process ) during the set timeframes.
Also, you need to understand that different critical issues come with different time constraints, so setting goals and deadlines as reminders is important.
5: Monitor Team Metrics
Conduct periodic reviews and generate reports on the team's performance. By regularly reviewing these reports, you can evaluate whether your team is meeting SLAs and timely resolving/approving the raised requests.
In short, these reports will provide insights into the types of issues raised and the speed of resolution, helping you analyze your team's overall performance. This way, you can take necessary actions, like providing training to improve skills and abilities, if there is a scope for improvement.
Is The Jira Ticketing System Sufficient For Meeting Your Team's Needs?
Although the Jira ticketing system offers several automation capabilities and benefits, it has certain drawbacks that can hamper your request management process. What are these drawbacks? How can they hinder your ongoing pro? If your team has no prior experience with Atlassian products, adopting Jira may be challenging due to its complexity and learning curves.
Also, if you are looking for notification functionalities but do not want to integrate with third-party apps because of budget constraints, then the Jira ticket system may not be the right option. Because it independently does not offer notification functionality, IT teams may not be promptly notified of newly raised tickets, leading to potential delays and misses on urgent service requests.
Additionally, Jira's search feature is not very flexible. It can be difficult to identify relevant tickets if keywords are not spaced appropriately or if symbols are missing. Teams, therefore, spend considerable time searching for the right keywords to achieve the desired outcome.
If you're willing to work around this limitation, the Jira ticketing system can be a viable solution. However, if you're looking for a better alternative, then Zluri might be the right choice for you. Zluri's app catalog and access request solution is remarkably intuitive, easy to use, and scalable. It offers timely notifications to your team through various channels and provides a detailed view of all incoming tickets on a centralized dashboard.
Furthermore, it categorizes tickets for streamlined management, allowing your team to effortlessly expedite the request management process. With Zluri's app catalog and access requests, your team can create structured workflows, trigger actions to manage requests, and track their progress to ensure no requests are overlooked.
Zluri's app catalog and access request positions itself as the ultimate solution for all your ticket management needs. However, the decision to continue with Jira or switch to Zluri to avail complete benefits is yours to make.
