Dealing with multiple Service Desks across projects within ITSM software continually affects many businesses' efficiency and competitiveness. The catch doesn't lie in the number of tasks, tickets, or requests but in how they are managed and displayed. This highly depends on defined needs, actual struggles, and the tool we want to use to solve them.

With ITSM software like Jira Service Management, users can easily track their task progress and prevent bottlenecks and scope creep. Nonetheless, common challenges involve more time, efforts, and prolonged decisions, complicating the whole management idea. No matter if you are an end-user (customer), admin, manager, or support team member.

Service Desk management. For they are many...

Managing issues, especially within multiple projects, requires access to specific tasks. That means the need to filter and display the expected ones conveniently, safely, and according to particular requirements.
Even though Jira generally supports those by default, the modern approach requires more flexible and user-friendly solutions.

Usually, the first thing that comes to mind is managing Service Desks through dashboards. However, that raises challenges related to the visibility and security of data within tickets.

It is expected that different support teams located in various places within the company or external branches have access only to the information related to their fields of expertise. For example, there is no need for the support team responsible for on-premise IT solutions to access data bound to cloud IT tools.

Yet another problem is that the customers are not obliged to know which team to address, the nature of their issue, e.g., from the technical side, or whether it can be solved locally or in the Cloud. Otherwise, it would require creating a separate service desk for each case, not to mention the inconvenience on the customers' side.

Considering all challenges, we may ask about the most optimal approach and solution. The answer is to work with the solution group. More specifically, to implement the functionality that allows access to the Service Desk as an agent with permissions to pre-filtered queues, including issues remaining in strictly defined specialization and responsibilities. That means all support teams respond to different customers through a single and convenient solution.

Queues for Jira Service Management. An answer without waiting in line

Queues for JSM is the Deviniti application available on Atlassian Marketplace – both for Cloud and Data Center/Server instances. It is a significant extension of the functionalities available in Atlassian software. The app is a response to the need to organize service requests in a more effective and versatile way.

It is designed for organizations supporting their users and customers (support teams or through the Jira Help Center) and companies managing many requests from various projects.

The solution allows the user to freely configure queues, mark them with names, limit their visibility and define their content with specific criteria.

The key functionalities of the Queues application include the following:

• convenient creation of cross-project queues and issues management from different Customer Portals (Service Desks)
• building Queue Groups and arranging them in multi-level structures.

That means the application makes it possible to create structures containing issues where each (or in groups) can have restricted visibility – globally or from a single project. They can also be arranged into folders to improve the clarity of given queues.

Queues for JSM offers both users and customers effortless communication. Strictly defined insight into various projects, displayed on a single view, shortens the time needed for expected reaction or response within a Service Desk. The app supports all system, custom as well as third-party application fields. Queues configuration may be exported to a popular JSON file format.

However, that's not all. Controlling the organization of requests within multiple service desks can be even more convenient!

My Requests Extension for Jira Service Management. What you see is what you need

The application streamlines work and saves users' time through the ability to customize the tickets view to their own needs. With the My Requests Extension application, the Jira admin can choose any configuration of fields and filters – in the request's view – and define the ticket visibility settings for a particular group of users.

In this regard, similar to the Queues for JSM app, the application significantly extends the default functionality provided in Jira Service Management.

The critical features of the My Requests Extension solution allow to:

• customize the Requests page to manage the Requests view users can adjust the view of requests on the Requests page to their own needs
• utilize filters
• for example, creating dedicated filters for customers
• restrict access to Requestsvisibility limitations for individual users
• fields configurationthe feature allows customizing the configuration of system fields and custom fields for the administrator

User Scopescollective grouping of individual users, user groups, or organizations improves configuration, particularly when setting the visibility of requests.

One of the most helpful feature in My Requests Extension app

Without the functionalities mentioned above, all those configurations would be time - and effort-consuming, especially in the case of large instances.

It's also worth mentioning that My Requests app allows for the following:

• customizing the banner that redirects to the requests page – admin can set a banner with any information that will redirect the user from the native requests page to the My Requests page
• exporting requests to the CSV file – the user can export requests to a CSV file.

The Deviniti application is available on Cloud and Data Center/Server instances on the Atlassian Marketplace. Both versions have almost identical functionalities, so changing the hosting (if needed) is seamless.

More answers, more practical solutions

Let's be aware that the challenges described so far are only part of the bigger picture. Managing tasks within multiple Service Desks involves not only browsing, filtering, and ordering tickets but also:

• customization and filling tickets strictly with expected details – Extension for Jira Service Management
• speed up the task creation (automatization) – Issue Templates for Jira
• displaying contact details and automating the approval process – Azure AD Attributes for Jira
• providing data crucial for a given project involving Confluence as its source – Advanced Confluence Integration for Jira.

Click here to watch the presentation of the Issue Templates for Jira app

With this in mind, we can solve even the most fundamental inconveniences:

• filling the long forms
• creating similar requests
• addressing individual tasks to specific teams
• switching between tasks
• tracking for requests.

We provide more information about dealing with such issues and how to use the proposed Deviniti applications for users and companies' benefits in the article Task management in Jira: how to make it more efficient, available on our blog. All suggested solutions create an ecosystem that fully supports the effective management of multiple Service Desks scattered across the ITSM software.

Summary

It may be a well know truism to say that the best solutions are the simplest ones, but in the case of Service Desks, it fits perfectly. The mentioned approaches and applications meet all expectations of users and customers required to run, maintain, and profit from support ventures successfully.

This way, it's possible to prevent disinformation effectively. Both customers and support teams are not forced to do mundane searching through the existing collection of tasks, requests, or issues. That means the customers have all the information they expect to receive, and support teams can respond much faster and more precisely to all problems.