How to see who is actively working on or viewing an Issue?

[Emily Carr]

My company just switched from Zendesk to Jira Service Desk. One of the features I have not been able to replicate is the feature in Zendesk which tells you who is actively viewing the ticket/issue- not just who the "watchers" are supposed to be, or who it is assigned to, or what the status of the request is. Having this feature was extremely helpful because it minimized the amount of times I had to bug my coworkers to check if they had seen the ticket/issue that needed to be addressed- there was simply a little box at the top of the ticket/issue which told me who else was actively viewing it at the same time. Can anyone advise whether this is possible to set up, or whether this isn't possible with Jira Service Desk? Thank you!

[Jarosław Kaczmarek]

Hi @Jack Brickey 

The point of this feature is not to give precise and intimate knowledge on who is doing what on the issue. The simple info "who is currently viewing" and/or "who currently is replying" would be an immense help to various teams. Whatever they do with that info is a different story and completely up to them.

The basic use case is as follows: Your staff is experiencing high volume ticket submissions, your Leads are supposed to review them + suggest solutions + assign as they go in but it's obvious the numbers are too big for them to handle, you want to step in and help. You write back to a customer in a ticket that something is not possible, and after sending the message you see that a minute ago your Lead has written that it is possible.

Yes, you can inform guys on Slack you will be writing back somewhere but this is not scalable and probably would work for small teams, with less volatile products. 

+ consider this also from the point that competitors like Zen Desk and FreshDesk have such features. Frankly, they have many quality-of-life features that JSM lacks and it probably wouldn't be a problem if just the feature we are now discussing was the only "missing" feature in JSM.

[Jack Brickey]

Good feedback to add to this open suggestion JRACLOUD-69160 Ability to see who is viewing an issue or ticket in Jira 

[Jack Brickey]

this feature does not exist unfortunately. there may be something in the Marketplace for this but TBH I am not aware of such. I would imagine the reliability of such in the current implementation would be questionable. For example If a user has a browser tab open to a specific detailed issue view that doesn't mean they are actively viewing it. Too there are a number of different 'view' screens so I would think it would have to consider each. A more elegant solution would be a start/stop work button for which there are some addon solutions.

If you find something that works for you be sure to share here.

[Emily Carr]

Thank you for your answer, I appreciate it! I'll have to look into some add-on solutions to see what might work. With Zendesk, they did have a timeout feature on the active view indicator for the situation you described above- if someone had a tab open, they would be shown as "idle" on the ticket... it's open on their screen, but they haven't actually looked at it in an hour (or whatever the time limit was). It was pretty reliable.

Thanks again!

[Amelia Parker]

Does the same answer still apply now as it did in 2019? Or has there been anything further developed for this?

[Jack Brickey]

Hi @Amelia Parker , welcome to the Community. Yes this is still the case. I would ask what precisely is your requirement. Do you need to know who has 'ownership' of an issue or do you really want to know who might have a browser viewing an issue. I struggle with the latter as it really doesn't tell me anything other than someone happened to click on a link to open it. Ownership, on the other hand, lets me know someone is or will be working the issue. Ownership, in Jira, equates to the Assignee. Or maybe there is a different requirement? If you can detail your requirements maybe there is a suitable solution to be had in the current Jira implementation.

[Amelia Parker]

Thank you for your response @Jack Brickey . We would like to see who is actively on the ticket at that present time, i.e browser viewing.  I am talking from a Service Desk perspective, tickets will come into an unassigned queue where the team will pick them up and assign them to themselves. The issue we have is that if you do not refresh the screen you will not see if it has already been assigned, resulting in one team member taking it from another. I have worked on other platforms and this was a simple yet useful tool to have

[Jack Brickey]

Maybe consider adding a notification to all agents when an issue is assigned. We integrated with Teams and Slack for improved real-time notifications. I certainly would not use "viewing" as a measure of ownership but understand the need to be notified in RT when assigned.

[Celine Bunag]

hey @Amelia Parker - I was just looking for an Issue Level access logging solution when I stumble upon this app from Atlassian. Haven't personally tried it but it seems from the overview what it does matches your need.

https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/1211596/whos-looking-for-jira-cloud?hosting=cloud&tab=overview