Category: Training

Giving the Go-Ahead: Approvals in Jira Service Management

Jira Service Management (JSM) includes a variety of features beyond what is available in Jira Software or Jira Work Management. One of the most powerful features is the ability to require an approval on any request. You can even require that a request be approved before an issue shows up in the service team’s queue. 

Approvals are useful for traditional ITSM processes – think of change management – but are also one of the key features that makes JSM a great solution for non-tech teams. Consider how many HR or Finance processes need to be approved before they can be carried out. Understanding (and being able to demonstrate) how approvals work helps promote Jira adoption by other service teams across the organization.

In my new Jira Service Management: Administration course, you’ll learn all about how to set up approval. You’ll learn:

  • What types of requests typically require an approval
  • How approval requirements impact your Jira workflow
  • How to control who can approve a request
  • How to set up multiple layers of approvals
  • Licensing requirements for approvers in Jira
  • How to notify approvers that there is a request they need to act on
  • What happens to requests that don’t get approved

And who are these “approvers” anyway? We’ll also look at the various ways to define who can approve a request (by request type, change advisory board (CAB) membership, user input etc.)

Adding approval to a JSM workflow

After examining scenarios that typically require an approval, we’ll go through the set up process step by step – from adding the appropriate transitions to your workflow, to customizing your approver notification email message. Then we’ll dig into some of the more advanced features – like forcing an approval or allowing agents to cancel the request. Finally, we’ll use JQL to search for requests that are pending an approval.

The course is designed with precise explanations and real world examples. I also include quizzes and challenges (with solutions) that you can try in your own Jira instance to cement your learning. Once you understand how approvals work in Jira, you’ll have a firm foundation for implementing JSM for any service team in your organization.

Take the course on LinkedIn now.

Not a LinkedIn Learning member yet? Start your 30 day LinkedIn Learning free trial! Access to my courses and others is included with your Premium subscription!

Rachel Wright’s Jira Courses on LinkedIn

New Course in JSM Administration

It’s always been true that nothing wins hearts and minds like good service. Providing good service is more important now than ever before. Customers expect support to be fast, accurate and easy to access. Service teams are required to develop efficient ways to serve internal and external customers, regardless of location. Many teams are now looking to Jira Service Management (JSM) as a solution.

My new Jira Service Management: Administration course will help you understand the unique features that JSM adds to Jira, how JSM can be used for ITSM processes, and how JSM differs between Jira Cloud and Jira Server/Data Center deployments. Most importantly, the class will show how you can configure and administer JSM to provide the best possible service to your customers. 

Jira Service Management: Administration course

Whether you’re completely new to Jira, or an experienced project or application administrator, you’ll be able to configure JSM so customers can create requests, support agents can provide the help needed, and leadership can measure effectiveness.

What You’ll Learn in Jira Service Management: Administration

  • The difference between an issue and a request
  • How to use the features of the customer portal
  • How to configure an effective, user-friendly request screen
  • Additional user types specific to JSM
  • Ways that service project workflows differ from other workflows
  • How to set up approvals
  • ITSM issue types in JSM
  • Configuring SLAs to measure service team performance
  • How to organize service queues
  • How to reduce request tickets with a Confluence knowledge base
  • Ways to reduce work with automation
  • How to use JSM reports and measure customer satisfaction

As always, the course will include in-depth explanations, demonstrations, challenges to build/configure in your own JSM instance and quizzes to help you remember what you’ve learned.

Whether your focused on empowering your IT service team, or wanting to expand JSM to other teams in your organization (JSM is great for HR, Legal, and Facilities teams), this course will show you how to leverage JSM’s features so teams can provide exceptional service and support.

Take the course on LinkedIn now.

Not a LinkedIn Learning member yet? Start your 30 day LinkedIn Learning free trial! Access to my courses and others is included with your Premium subscription!

Rachel Wright’s Jira Courses on LinkedIn

Coming Soon – Jira Service Management: Administration

My new Jira Service Management: Administration course is now available! Take the course on LinkedIn now.

Not a LinkedIn Learning member yet? Start your 30 day LinkedIn Learning free trial! Access to my courses and others is included with your Premium subscription!

About the Course

Jira Service Management (JSM) is built on Jira and extends it so your organization can effectively manage incidents, problems, changes, and service requests.  Jira Service Management takes support to the next level with queues, SLAs, a simple interface for your customers, and integration with Confluence as a knowledgebase.

In this course, you’ll learn how to set up and administer Jira Service Management so customers can create requests, support agents can provide the help users need, and leadership can measure effectiveness.

In this administration course, you’ll learn:

  • How JSM extends Jira with support-specific features
  • The additional types of users and responsibilities
  • Using JSM for incident management, change management, problems, service requests, and support
  • How to configure request types, permissions, and notifications
  • How to configure the customer portal and connect to a Confluence knowledgebase for self-service
  • How to create, manage, and troubleshoot service level agreements (SLAs)
  • Using automation to reduce manual work and repetitive tasks
  • How to leverage reporting to gauge effectiveness and measure customer satisfaction

“Considering application health, the user experience, and finding a balance between them is the difference between a good administrator and a great one.”
– Rachel Wright

Advanced Jira Administration: Getting into the Scheme of Things

A practical example for a development project

Let’s say you create specific Jira issue types because you want to collect a different data set for each type, and because want the different issue types to use different workflows. So what do you do next? How do you tell Jira what information to collect for each issue type? Should you create screens or a field configuration scheme first? What’s the difference between an issue type scheme and an issue type screen scheme? How do you associate an issue type with a workflow?

Understanding Jira schemes and how they interact with each other is one of the most important, and most challenging parts of Jira administration. My new Advanced Jira Administration course will help you understand:

  • The nine different Jira schemes and what each one does
  • Where to find the schemes used by a given project
  • The hierarchal relationship between screen schemes and issue type screen schemes
  • The correct order for creating screens, screen schemes and issue type screen schemes
  • How to remove a screen, screen scheme or issue type screen scheme
  • How to share schemes across multiple projects
  • When and how to create custom schemes
  • And much more
The course contains challenges, quizzes, downloadable handouts, and personal stories.

In this course, we’ll discuss real-life Jira scheme examples, areas where it’s easy to go wrong, and best practices for creating and managing schemes. The course includes clear explanations, demonstrations, and challenges (with solutions!) to try in your Jira application.

Once you understand Jira schemes you’ll have the keys to unlock Jira efficiency and scaleability.

Rachel Wright’s Jira Courses on LinkedIn

Not a LinkedIn Learning member yet? Start your 30 day LinkedIn Learning free trial! Access to my courses and others is included with your Premium subscription!

New Course – Jira: Advanced Administration

Jira: Advanced Administration with Rachel Wright
Take “Jira: Advanced Administration” with Rachel Wright

Life is short. Jira is complex. There simply isn’t time to make all of the mistakes and learn everything you need to know by trial and error. I’ve compiled over eight years of lessons learned in my Jira Basic and Advanced Administration courses. The advanced course is available now on LinkedIn! It will help you navigate the complexities of Jira and find the right balance between user support and application functionality. Take this course to correctly configure your application and make sure it stays clean, manageable, and flexible.

Course Structure

The Jira: Advanced Administration course picks up where the Jira: Basic Administration course leaves off. The advanced course is designed to help you understand and internalize Jira concepts by including:

  • Real world examples of what to do, and what not to do taken from my personal experience
  • Explanations of the latest Jira jargon (ie. Company-managed projects vs team-managed projects)
  • Tips and best practices
  • Demonstrations
  • Challenges that you can try in your own Jira application
  • Quizzes to ensure understanding and build your confidence
  • Handouts
  • And more

While the examples used in the course are from Jira Software, the lessons can also be applied to Jira Service Management and Jira Work Management projects. All deployment types (Cloud, Server, and Data Center) are included.

Course Content

The course takes a deep dive into topics such as configuring global permissions, understanding scheme hierarchy, creating custom schemes and custom workflows, managing project settings, working with groups and roles, and controlling access to information.  

Your job as a Jira administrator is to give your teams the functionality they need and ensure the long term health of your Jira application. We’ll discuss when and how to make customizations and how to choose from the thousands of available Jira apps and extensions.

Finally, we’ll also look at advanced Jira features such as creating issues from email and issue collectors, importing data into your Jira instance, and streamlining process with automation.

Knowing the best way to solve a problem and how it will impact your application in the future is the difference between a good Jira administrator and a great one. If you’re a newly minted Administrator, an experienced JA looking for guidance on taming an overgrown Jira instance, or a determined perfectionist who’s trying to set things up right the first time – then this course is for you!

Rachel Wright’s Jira Courses on LinkedIn

Not a LinkedIn Learning member yet? Start your 30 day LinkedIn Learning free trial! Access to my courses and others is included with your Premium subscription!

Coming Soon – Jira: Advanced Administration

My new Jira: Advanced Administration course is now available! Take the course on LinkedIn now.

Not a LinkedIn Learning member yet? Start your 30 day LinkedIn Learning free trial! Access to my courses and others is included with your Premium subscription!

About the Course

Jira is the industry standard for tracking work, tasks, and strategic company initiatives.  The software is infinitely flexible and customizable, which is both a blessing and a curse.  The goal of the Jira administrator should be to configure application settings to support the needs of the organization and ensure the health of the application in the future.  This requires an intimate understanding of Jira’s capabilities, global options, and scheme configuration.

In this advanced Jira administration course, you’ll learn:

  • The most important configuration options like general settings and global permissions
  • How schemes work together to power Jira projects
  • How to create custom projects, issue types, workflows, screens, and custom fields
  • How to manage project-specific settings like components and versions
  • Working with groups and roles for easy user management
  • How to restrict access and share information with permission, issue security, and notification schemes
  • Ways to extend Jira with apps, connections, and integrations
  • Advanced features like importing data, creating issues from email, adding custom events, and automation
  • And more

“Knowing the best way to solve a problem and how it will impact your application in the future is the difference between a good administrator and a great one.”
– Rachel Wright

New Course: Learning Jira (Server Edition)

How do you track your work? As organizations continue to adopt digital technology, more and more teams are leveraging Jira! By learning Jira you’ll be able to easily manage your own daily tasks and help your organization plan their strategic initiatives.

I’ve used Jira since 2011 and it’s the best application I’ve found to manage my work.  Join my LinkedIn Learning course to understand Jira fundamentals and how you can leverage this software to tame your never-ending “to do” list.

Not a LinkedIn Learning member yet? Start your 30 day LinkedIn Learning free trial! Access to my courses and others is included with your Premium subscription!

Rachel Wright’s Jira Courses on LinkedIn

Use Jira Cloud instead?

Learning Jira Server

My new Learning Jira Server course is available now! Use Jira Cloud instead?

By learning Jira you’ll be able to easily manage your own daily tasks and help your organization plan their strategic initiatives. In this course, you’ll learn all about navigating Jira, working with projects and issues, and creating filters, dashboards, and boards.  I’ll show you everything you need to know so you can get started right away.

Take my Jira course on LinkedIn. Access is included with your Premium subscription! Not a member yet? Start your 30 day LinkedIn Learning free trial

Rachel Wright’s Jira Courses on LinkedIn

New Jira Basic Administration Course

For every Jira application there’s an administrator that needs to correctly configure settings, manage users, complete customization requests, and ensure the instance supports growth and change in their organization.

But how do you learn to do that?

Take my new course! Jira: Basic Administration is perfect for new Jira admins or anyone who could use a refresher on the top skills every administrator needs.

This course includes the top 5 things every Jira admin needs to know like: adding users, creating projects, editing workflows, and troubleshooting common permission and notification problems.

You’ll learn:

  • how to use Jira,
  • which application type you have,
  • the responsibilities of an administrator,
  • how to access the most used admin areas, and
  • how to set up a test environment so you can experiment without impacting production data.

Take my Jira admin course on LinkedIn. Access is included with your Premium subscription! Not a member yet? Start your 30 day LinkedIn Learning free trial

Rachel Wright’s Jira Courses on LinkedIn

Rachel Wright’s Jira Courses on LinkedIn

Rachel Wright at LinkedIn’s recording studio

I’m excited to announce my Jira courses are now part of LinkedIn’s technology course library! I’m officially a LinkedIn Learning instructor! In March 2020 LinkedIn flew me to their California offices to film my Jira: Basic Administration course.

LinkedIn’s online video courses help you learn software, creative, and business skills. Classes are taught by credible industry experts with a focus on high-quality content and production value. Over 50 new courses are added each week, so there’s always something new to learn.

And the best part: Their entire course library is included with your LinkedIn Premium subscription! Not a member yet? Start your 30 day LinkedIn Learning free trial

I loved teaching Jira administration in their professional video and audio recording studios. I felt like a movie star!

On the Road with Jira

I’ve been on the road since 2015 and I take every opportunity to combine my love of Jira and travel. On this LinkedIn recording trip, I completed another item from my Jira bucket list! I visited the Channel Islands in Ventura, California. The five individual islands are only accessible only by boat. I visited Santa Cruz and Anacapa and can’t wait to go back!

Hello from the Channel Islands

Rachel Wright’s Jira Courses on LinkedIn