Jira Service Desk Best Practices

[Eric R Hartway]

I have a general question regarding Issue Types and Screens in Jira Service Desk.  Currently, we have a "Service Request" Issue type with related screens that is used for the majority of our request types on the customer portal (allowing for re-use of the workflow and screens).  Because of this, the create Screen has hundreds of fields associated with it.  My question is, would it be more efficient to add a unique Issue Type and Screen for each new request, or continue adding fields to the same Issue Type as we currently are?  Curious how others have set up their portals.  Thanks for any info,

-Eric. 

[Dirk Ronsmans · Accepted solution]

Hi @Eric R Hartway 

Great question! and this is one that has been rattling in my brain as well.

Personally I tend to work like you are doing right now. The process of Request Fulfillment will remain the same for all those Request Types and the Request Types are a good way to request dynamic/flexible information based on the Service the end user is requesting you to provide.

For me, the only reason I would create a 1:1 relation between a Request Type and an Issue type would be if they require a largely different workflow.

The excess of fields is annoying when creating it directly from the Agent view but if you get in to the flow of using "raise a request". This combined with the fact that a empty field is not shown on the view screen makes the clutter a lot less.

The one thing I would like to happen tho would that you can choose a Request Type from the Agent view (Create) and the Request Form opens instead of the Issue view.. (and that's even only on Cloud).

As you are on Server, Scriptrunner is also an option to show/hide fields when needed. I tend to use that (behaviours) to make the screens a bit less cluttered.

TLDR; i would keep making fields as the process behind it (issue type) will remain the same. Creating an issue type for each Request type seems like a lof of overhead and I gotta think that's not how Atlassian intends it to be used or they wouldn't have created the Request Type concept :)

[Eric R Hartway]

Quick follow up on this.  As mentioned before, I have hundreds of fields on the create screen.  When adding a field to a new request type, I have to scroll through them all to find the one I want.  Is it possible to sort the "add a field" list alphabetically?  That would make finding my fields much more efficient.  Thanks for the input!

[Dirk Ronsmans]

Hey @Eric R Hartway ,

That's currently not possible, it seems it adds the fields in that list just based on when you created them/added them to the issue type/scheme/..

I suggest raising it as a feedback on https://jira.atlassian.com/secure/Dashboard.jspa

There we can vote on it and follow up should it become part of the implementation roadmap. I looked for this suggestion there but couldn't find one myself.