Approvals in JIRA anytime, anywhere
Challenges
The company operates several Jira Service Desk projects for its many internal teams. These include the sales team, where a Service Desk was built specially to approve discounts, while an interface was also built for the legal team where clients could ask for advice related to legal issues. In addition, the company also operates a traditional Service Desk for responding to IT inquiries. Though these projects were very different regarding the business processes involved, they did have one thing in common: in each business process, approval had to be requested from someone at least once.
The company tried several temporary solutions before coming across the Atlassian Jira product range. This kind of functionality was already integrated into Jira Service Desk, and it is also relatively easy to build Jira workflows where approvals can be requested. In addition, Atlassian Marketplace offers several additional applications to help achieve this objective. For example, the documentation side of META-INF's Email This Issue app provides an excellent solution for email approvals.
Problems raised
Previous solutions had caused several headaches for the company. Approvers received between 300 and 400 approval notifications per day via email. One common issue was that it was easy to lose track of some approval requests among all the messages that built up. In addition, even if the approver noticed the request, they still had to log in to Jira to complete the approval. This meant that an approval option directly via email became very popular at the company. Yet, this also brought with it further challenges.
On the one hand, there was concern among the user base that the Service Users would carry out certain processes and approvals instead of team members. In addition, there were also drawbacks to the creation of several hundred emails a day, given that people could quickly end up deleting some approval when tidying up their inboxes. On top of this, if the development was not performed with due care, the approvals could easily appear in the development system, which meant that the approved requests would not appear in the Jira system.
Furthermore, there had been several occasions in the company’s history when certain requests were approved without the knowledge of the person responsible for approval. This problem was caused by the condition that triggered the approval notification, which stipulated that the letter must contain the word 'approve'. And if the approver was marked as unavailable, most out-of-office messages began precisely like this. In this case, every individual request that was presented for approval was automatically approved on the same day.
Summary
Industry: Manufacturing
Location: Central Europe
Requirements:
- Stable, reliable and unified IT service desk platform
- Serving the diverse needs of customers and employees on a global scale
Implemented product(s):
- Jira Service Management
- Email This Issue for Jira
- Atlassian Marketplace add-ons
Solution
The company needed the right Jira solution, with the kind of online interface that could store approvals, a well-integrated automated system and an agent. The company prepared the latter to continually monitor the tickets requiring approval in the Jira system. If such a ticket is received, the system uploads it to a Microsoft SharePoint list, and the workflow immediately sends a notification to the approver’s mobile phone. The responsible person approves the request, and the decision is then sent back to SharePoint. At this point, all the agents must complete the proper transactions based on the result.
The company broke down the architecture into modules for efficiency, which means that whatever Jira deployment the company has, be it Jira Service Desk, Jira Software or Jira Core, they only need to add a post-function to the approval request and the feature is activated. In certain cases, the agent will also send an approval request to a mobile phone. Here, MS Sharepoint and Flow are not even needed for the process, as Google Forms can perform the same services similarly. All that's required to run the agent is a Windows or Mac server, as it has minimal hardware requirements.
Result
The power of additional applications
The company uses various applications to help implement this process. In Microsoft Flow, approvals are displayed in a tab called Permissions. When the agent sends information to the SharePoint list about needing approval, a notification appears on the approver's mobile phone. Regardless of the request, the approver can approve the request in the notification or reject it. If they need further information, they can click on the notification to see the full details of the request. The approver can even forward and delegate a given approval request.
With JQL, staff can even configure which requests to ask for approval for, speeding up the workflow. For example, they can configure it to ensure that only the highest priority requests are sent for mobile approval, while all other requests are directed to conventional channels. Within the company, employees can keep track of which manager is working for which hours, so they can always send approvals to the currently available manager. In addition, with an opt-in, opt-out system, the manager can redirect approval requests themselves by adjusting the user settings. In terms of security, the company uses an agent-server architecture to implement the process, which means there is no need to allow the entire Microsoft portfolio into the firewall for the agent to communicate with the Jira system.
About the client
National Instruments Hungary Kft. was founded in 2003. In addition to manufacturing household devices and electronic consumer items, it carries out various high-added-value activities. These include research and development, IT systems development, and operating several global service centers. With the help of Jira, the company has paired its services with a new method that has made it easier to request and manage approvals.
About the partner
About the product
Jira Service Management
Jira Service Management is Atlassian’s service management solution for all teams. It is designed to help you unlock high-velocity teams by empowering every team to deliver great service fast, bringing visibility to work, and accelerating the flow of work between development, IT, and business teams.
META-INF Email This Issue for Jira
Make your customers' lives easier through email-based communication. Improves the productivity of your help desk team by enabling them to receive and respond to emails without leaving Jira.
Source: Approvals in JIRA anywhere, anytime - Case study video, META-INF Atlassian Day.
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