Gradual Jira implementation and standardization at DPDgroup 

In 2015, the decision was made to migrate from the previous heterogeneous system – which used OTRS, Dotproject, and Cloud Jira – to unify everything in Jira. DPDgroup IT Solutions had already been using Jira to some extent for some time. One of the main reasons for the more widespread implementation of Jira was to establish a central, united platform. The company asked META-INF to help with this process.

Version six of Jira was launched in the same year. In 2016, a solution using the earlier version of Jira Core used by the Polish team was adapted into a Service Desk and migrated into the unified system. The same year also saw Jira's update to version 7 and the implementation of BitBucket.

Widespread integration and use of Atlassian tools

DPDgroup IT Solutions used numerous elements of Atlassian's extensive arsenal to facilitate and accelerate the company's everyday work. Fortunately, the individual tools not only fit well with each other, but also integrated perfectly with the unified Jira system.

Software support was at the center of their work, and they used the Jira Service Desk to complete related tasks. It proved to be a great tool for the team, as they work with global products, are involved in IT backend services, and also handle regional software modules. During these processes, Jira Service Desk not only provides the opportunity to monitor error tickets but also supports requirements management tasks.

During software development tasks, two different methodologies were applied: agile and a conventional waterfall approach. Jira Software, Bitbucket, and SourceTree tools were used during the agile development process and provided excellent support for fast, iterative development. With the traditional waterfall approach, on the other hand, Jira Core was used, which makes it possible to monitor and handle tasks broken down into conventional phases.

The Confluence platform was used to compile documentation and a single knowledge base. Confluence provides a structured, easy-to-search, and easily updated interface that encourages communication and knowledge to flow between teams.

Confluence makes it easy to create public spaces – an important feature in relation to the Service Desk. The Service Desk automatically recommends solutions for reports created there, which encourages independent problem-solving and relieves the burden on staff.

Email or Customer Site?

Initially, email appeared to be the most optimal way for the company to track and manage issues, as it was the most convenient approach for their customers. Jira was also a great tool for this, with the use of various additions, such as META-INF's Email This Issue add-on.

However, the underdeveloped email-based ticketing system also led to several complications. Among other things, there were difficulties in setting the type and priority of incoming requests, and – unlike the Service Desk interface – there was no easy overview of existing requests. This meant that customers who preferred email ended up opening extra tickets just to check the status of their existing tickets.

As a result, significant improvements were made to the system, and communication was almost completely redirected: DPDgroup customers now contact them directly through the Service Desk interface, which makes communication much easier for both parties. One significant related factor was that the IT team also began using the Customer Site and essentially completely deactivated email-based communication from the Jira system.

This change increased the effectiveness of workflows and made communication and ticket management easier to understand and more transparent for customers.

How does the error reporting process work at DPDgroup?

The DPDgroup team has ten different Service Desks linked to ten customer portals that are connected by a shared 'intro page.' This interface, known internally as the 'Entry Point,' lists customer sites and helps users in contact with more than one Service Desk find their way around. From here, users can navigate to the given Service Desk website, where the actual error detection takes place.

Entry Point page and software support error detection page

Customizability was a huge help in the design of each reporting interface. By adding ‘custom field’ fields to the notification, you can also specify the product to be notified and the priority of the notification, which determines the type of service level agreement (SLA). This was a huge help for the multidimensional SLA handling used by the team.

Another optional but very useful feature is Organization Sharing, which allows users belonging to the same organization or group to see each other's issues, making communication more flexible and transparent. This feature was first introduced in Jira version 7, though it was also previously available via a plugin.

Organization Sharing: requests submitted by a group are listed and can be accessed and managed by all group members.

Although the team had previously committed to minimizing the use of email, we did retain one important feature for this communication channel: the sending of status notifications.

When a new issue is created, or an incident is reported, users are notified of status changes by email. The reason for this is simple: not all users use the Service Desk on a daily basis, so it is important for them to be informed of any status changes promptly. Such notification emails will also include a link for users to return to the Customer Site. Next, after a rapid authentication, they can view conversations and comments related to the issue.

This feature combines the advantages of email and Jira Service Desk effectively, ensuring both a positive user experience and the smooth flow of information.

What can team members see?

Team members can transparently track incoming issues and incidents through the default interface provided by Jira Service Desk. This feature enables them to handle needs and issues, ensuring effective customer management proactively.

In addition, Service Desk is able to create highly customizable dashboards that are extremely flexible: you can include charts, statements, lists of results from filters, etc.

The IT Operations team leader's personalized dashboard: it shows the performance of the entire team, own cases, critical case rates, escalated cases and other relevant statistics.

These dashboards play a key role in managing the daily tasks of the staff. When an issue is received, dashboards help to allocate tasks in the right direction, ensuring that the right person or team sees the tasks as a priority.

SLA management

Perhaps the most important feature of the Service Desk for the team is the built-in Service Level Agreement (SLA) management. This operation starts with the definition of metrics. For DPDgroup, this means two metrics: 'First response' and 'Resolution time'. For each metric, you can define when the counters assigned to it start, stop and pause. SLA goals are defined using JQL.

Results of the metrics of a three-tier support organization on an issue.

Important numbers, such as ‘Resolution time,’ are automatically stored by Jira so that they can be reported later.

A useful Service Desk standard feature is SLA-based prioritization, which automatically prioritizes tasks in order of execution, helping to manage staff's tasks.

Further useful Service Desk features: filters, reports

The filters allow users to see only relevant issues and find the information they need more quickly. It is also possible to create custom, rather complex filters, subscribe to them, schedule them, and export the results to email, PDF, or Excel.

The Service Desk also has sophisticated reporting features, which the DPDgroup team makes use of. Reports are easy to create and customize, with individually defined series.

Reporting in Jira: tracking resolution times, prioritized by issues

The extensive implementation and standardization of Jira have made the daily work of DPDgroup IT Solutions much more professional. The implemented workflows have been a great help in monitoring and keeping to the company's own internal organizational work processes. The overhaul in technology led to far cleaner, more transparent, and more structured operations.

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.

Jira Core
Jira Core is a business project management software aiming at the simplest possible traceability of workflows and tasks.

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.

Bitbucket

With best-in-class Jira integration, and built-in CI/CD, Bitbucket Cloud is the native Git tool in Atlassian’s Open DevOps solution. 

Confluence

Confluence is a remote-friendly team workspace where knowledge and collaboration meet. It is designed to help teams accomplish more together by providing a space to build, organize, and collaborate on work in one place from virtually anywhere.

Sourcetree:

Atlassian Sourcetree is a free Git and Mercurial client for Windows and Mac. It simplifies how you interact with your Git repositories so you can focus on coding. Sourcetree provides a simple graphical user interface (GUI) to visualize and manage your repositories.

Source: How does Jira support the work of DPDgroup IT Solutions? – META-INF Atlassian Day