Handling Attachments and Comments Across Different Projects

[Tihomir Nikolov _Nemetschek Bulgaria_]

Recently, one of our customers who has both Jira Service Management (JSM) and Jira Software projects faced a very specific challenge regarding comments and attachments between customers and the developers, working on their tickets.

The customers work in a Jira Service Management Project, while the developers use a Jira Software project.

When submitting tickets on the JSM portal, it was mandatory for customers to attach files. These attachments - often crucial documentation like screenshots - were essential for developers to accurately understand and address reported issues. Firstly, we made a post function which copies the ticket, which the customer submits on the JSM portal in the Jira Software project for the developers to see. However, while these attachments showed up as comments on the JSM tickets, they didn’t transfer to Jira Software project tickets when the tickets were copied. Standard methods allowed for comments to be copied, but attachments were left behind.

To address this challenge, we implemented a creative solution using the Jira Misc Workflow Extensions (JMWE) app. Here’s how it works:

• A custom workflow was designed with self-transitions, allowing tickets to stay in the same status while executing specific actions. For instance, in the "Fixing" status, a transition called Send to the Client was created.

• When clicking on the Send to the client action in the Jira Software project, a transition screen pops up for the developer to add comments and attachments, which will show up on the portal, but the status of the ticket will not change.

Two key JMWE post functions were added to this transition:

• Copy Issue Fields: This function copies relevant fields from the JSM ticket to the corresponding ticket in Jira Software. In this case, used to copy the attachment files.
• Copy Comment to Related Issues: This function ensured comments and attachments were transferred, providing developers with all necessary information.

This setup was especially useful since developers often didn’t have access to the JSM portal. With the Send to the Client transition, they could add their comments and attachments directly from Jira Software.

The outcome was a significant improvement in communication. Developers no longer had to worry about missing attachments or incomplete information when working on client tickets. All necessary details, including comments and attachments, were fully synchronized between JSM and Jira Software, enhancing collaboration and speeding up issue resolution.

The same approach is applicable in another project where the goal is to sync several bug reports to the same bug from different users.

[James Cope]

I am performing similar actions and have no issues moving additional attachment communications from JSW to JSM tickets. My issue is that the customers have no popup presenting when executing portal-exposed transition links from their tickets. So I have no way of enforcing and attachment (or comment) during that process. I welcome any thoughts on how to streamline the process whereby my designer wants to request additional files from the customer (easily handled) and the customer needs to get said files back to the designer via the portal, which has no validators, conditions, or popups available.