Prioritising workload (IT Helpdesk)

[Andrew Fleming]

We in our IT Helpdesk have issues (requests, incidents etc) in our queue. Priorities at the moment can fluctuate on a daily basis greatly as there is a lot changing in the business. I personally am a visual guy. To keep my day in perspective I’d like to be able to see at a glance what is priority now and what tasks are lower priority that can / have to wait. 

Is there a way in JIRA (and if not inside JIRA then a third party software or app) to personally prioritise the issues in my queue or categorise them into priority groups? So they show on my screen very clearly so I am doing less clicking into each issue and it keeps my mind less scattered?

ideally I’d sort my queue by oldest created issue first and deal with them in that order. However, this isn’t going to work because, as is often the case , end users who cannot sign into the corporate vpn or are reporting their password as expires, for example, these issues need dealt with rather promptly as and when they come in. 

thanks in advance. 

[Victor Law · Accepted solution]

Hi @Andrew Fleming

I suggest you create a personal Jira dashboard with a few gadgets based on the category or prioritized tasks. You may refer to the list below for the full list of native Jira Dashboard gadgets:

https://support.atlassian.com/jira-cloud-administration/docs/use-dashboard-gadgets/

You may consider configuring a few Filter Results gadgets to view multiple prioritized queues on one page.

Thank you.

[Andrew Fleming]

Thanks guys really appreciate the input here - this has been very helpful!

Thank you

[Darren Ching]

Hi @Andrew Fleming ,

Victor gave a great suggestion and using Filter Results is neat. You could also try building a custom queue with certain filters although there isn't currently a way to enable grouping in there.

If you are open to third party apps on Marketplace, consider checking out Hierarchy for Jira. It’s an app my team and I work on to visualise issues and relationships/dependencies in a nested tree view.

This is how it might look like for you:

In the example above, I grouped the issues by type and sorted based on priority. You could also configure a separate view that looks exactly the same, but grouped based on priority instead and sorted based on the oldest created issue. The app supports having multiple views, so you can switch between them if you have other organising preferences in mind.

You can also choose to show or hide child issues like Subtasks or linked issues, if you have any, like in the screenshot above. This isn't necessary but I included anyway in case you have a use for it. This way you'll get to see all your priorities at a glance.

Feel free to ask away if you have questions. Hopefully this helps!

[Carlos Garcia Navarro]

Hi @Andrew Fleming ,

Welcome to the Community! I recommend this article to help with your questions:

https://www.atlassian.com/blog/jira-software/organizing-issues-priority-optimize-delivery