Atlassian’s Jira Service Management is an indispensable tool used by over 45,000 organizations to manage service requests and build agile teams in IT and beyond. While JSM is rooted in IT service management, it can help every team provide quality, efficient responses to service requests. From document approval in the legal department to employee onboarding in HR, JSM improves communication and response efficiency, keeping business goals and service operations aligned.
Recently, Atlassian unveiled several new features designed to bolster JSM’s capabilities in communication, collaboration, and incident response. Here are five of the most notable new features, and how each one can help your organization improve service delivery.
1. Integrated Chat Connects Users Quickly to Support
As organizations experience unprecedented application sprawl, with a near sevenfold increase in the average number of SaaS apps in business tool stacks over the last 5 years, workers grapple with new levels of context-switching, or the process of shifting from one task or tool to another. For employees, context-switching isn’t only distracting, but also time-consuming. It takes almost ten minutes on average for someone to become fully productive again after switching between software applications.
Atlassian recently acquired conversational ticketing startup Halp and integrated its chat-based support to every JSM plan. The new integration allows end users to reach service desk agents directly from Slack or Microsoft Teams. This not only removes barriers to users getting the support they need, but it also helps optimize all employees’ productivity by reducing the need to context-switch.
2. Virtual Agents Ease Burden of Tier-1 Support
In addition to making support more accessible to users, new updates will also help service agents use their time more efficiently. After acquiring AI language-processing startup Percept.ai, Atlassian has incorporated its AI and machine learning into conversational ticketing to provide users with automated, customizable help via virtual agents before escalating them to a live agent.
Virtual agents make it possible for organizations using JSM to fully automate initial tier-1 support, which saves service desk agents time triaging and redirecting requests and allows them to dedicate more time to requests that need more technical knowledge or troubleshooting. While this feature is still in beta testing, teams can sign up to join the limited early access program now.
3. Mobile Incident Response Means Faster Issue Resolution
Mobile access to tools has become essential in distributed work environments, and nowhere is timely communication more important than in time-sensitive incident response. Critical incident response capabilities in JSM can now be handled on mobile devices, making it easier for service agents to manage issues that need quick resolution.
Users will also be able to view and edit on-call schedules and receive notifications via mobile app. Whether your team uses tiered support or swarming, a collaborative model of response that prioritizes efficiency, mobile capabilities make it even easier to provide dynamic support and proactively manage risk.
4. Greater Automation Options for Change Requests
ITIL recommends that organizations follow standardized approval procedures to implement changes while managing risk and avoiding negative impact on services. However, manually regulating these changes can slow IT operations and software development teams down, as teams must wait for change management requests to be completed before moving forward.
The good news: change management is getting easier with JSM. New advanced change approval rules allow teams to regulate change management processes on an even more granular level, with features like multi-group and individual permissions. In addition, new integrations with additional CI/CD tools allow automation to alleviate the administrative burden of change management for more Jira users. In Bitbucket, Jenkins, CircleCI, Octopus Deploy, and now GitHub and GitLab, integration with JSM means that users can create automated change requests without leaving the platform.
5. Pre-built Templates Applicable for More Departments
Pre-built forms are an essential feature that makes JSM easy to use across teams of any size. These no-code forms come with agile strategy and Atlassian’s industry-leading ITSM expertise baked-in. Organizations can simply customize these forms to reflect individual teams’ needs, and start using them immediately.
Now, Atlassian has announced a new set of pre-built forms, bringing their list of offerings to over 300 templates. Because ITSM principles can improve workflow efficiency and communication across the enterprise, these forms offer plug-and-play functionality to even more departments: the library of templates already spanned HR, facilities, legal, and customer service, and has expanded to include marketing, finance, and analytics. Now more teams can swiftly create functional, efficient workflows, making agile with JSM even easier.
New Features Strengthen Efficiency, Communication, and Collaboration
Shihab Hamid, Head of Product at Atlassian, highlighted the way these updates improve efficiency and communication across the enterprise while announcing these features and more at Atlassian Presents: High Velocity ITSM. As a whole, these updates aim “to deliver optimal value fast while connecting modern support and operations teams,” he shared at the event. In other words, the new features allow JSM to do what it does best, better—meaning better alignment around business goals for every organization.
However, the process of adopting these new features and maximizing their benefits can be overwhelming for any team, especially for those who are adopting JSM for the first time. Contegix’s team of Atlassian experts have extensive experience supporting organizations in optimizing their use of JSM. As an Atlassian Specialized ITSM partner, Contegix can assist with any step of JSM implementation, from evaluating and reorganizing existing workflows to tailoring JSM to meet your organization’s unique needs.
To learn more about ITSM and its role in modern business, as well as how Contegix can assist your organization in creating effective ITSM strategy, download our eBook, 3 Common Mistakes to Avoid in an ITSM Strategy.