Is it possible to create a robust company-to-customer experience in Atlassian Products?

[Michael Allen]

We're a small development team starting up a new project, and we thought we'd give the Atlassian line of products a try.  We've tested Jira, Confluence and JSM, and like everything we saw for internal use. 

However, one thing I'm very interested in is to create a solid collaborative experience with the customer, to a more limited degree.  I'd like customers to have a limited view of internal documents, and be able to fill out information on specific interactive forms we could expose to them, without giving them the ability to edit anything.  I would also like to provide the customer real-time data on progress, (such as the Kanban and roadmap) without giving them too much detail or the ability to drill down.  And finally, I would like to provide them a means of giving feedback and bug reporting, without having them generate actual tasks in Jira.

In trying to make this happen, I started with permissions in Confluence and figured out how to selectively show pages to the customer, and removing their editing permissions for what they could see.  But, when it came time to implement interactivity such as the Handy Status macro, or the Easy Status macro, I couldn't get anything to work.  I've tried various forms apps, and they seem to work in a read-only scenario, but I'm not looking to collect new form data on each submission, I'm looking for a static set of data that everyone can edit, without being able to edit the page.  I couldn't get anything remotely like bug tracking to work without implementing JRM, which is cost-prohibitive for a single customer and 3 programmers to use.

Are the Atlassian products capable of anything like what we're looking for?

[Oday Rafeh · Accepted solution]

Hey @Michael Allen,

it's a very good question, Let me try to explain it to you from my knowledge. 

Atlassian products can be used to create a solid collaborative experience between your company and customers, although it may require some configuration and tweaking. Here are some suggestions for achieving your goals:

Limited view of internal documents:
You can use Confluence's permission settings to restrict the pages that customers can view and disable their editing rights. You've mentioned that you've already accomplished this, so that's a great start.

Interactive forms for customers:
You can try using apps like "ConfiForms" or "Forms for Confluence, " which allow you to create forms on Confluence pages. These apps offer various levels of customization and access control, enabling you to create forms that customers can fill out without editing the page or other content.

Real-time progress data:
You can use Jira's built-in dashboards or Confluence pages with Jira integration to display real-time progress data. You can create a custom dashboard or Confluence page with gadgets/charts that show relevant project progress and grant customers access to view the dashboard/page. To limit the level of detail, customize the gadgets or Jira macros to show only high-level data without drill-down capabilities.

Customer feedback and bug reporting:
Jira Service Management (JSM) is a great solution for handling customer feedback and bug reporting. You can create a simple help centre portal where customers can submit requests, report bugs, or provide feedback. This way, customers won't be able to create tasks directly in your Jira project, and your team can review and triage the incoming requests.

However, if JSM is cost-prohibitive, you can consider alternative methods like creating a Confluence page with an embedded form (using the form apps mentioned earlier) for customers to report bugs or provide feedback. You can then use automation or manual processes to create corresponding issues in Jira based on the submitted form data.

While Atlassian products offer many possibilities for creating a collaborative experience with customers, it may take some trial and error to configure the perfect setup for your needs. Keep exploring available apps, features, and configurations to achieve the desired level of customer interaction.

[Abraham - New Verve Consulting · Accepted solution]

Hi @Michael Allen

To add to the excellent response from @Oday Rafeh, there are some other apps in the Atlassian Marketplace that could be helpful. 

For example, Crumbs is a simple CRM that allows you to:

• Manage your customer organizations in one central place
• Create custom fields and arrange them in sections to capture the information that your teams need
• Easily search for and segment your customers
• View information in context using the Crumbs glance in Jira issues
• Search for linked issues by using built-in JQL functions
• Import and export your data in CSV
• Control user access using global and project permissions
• Build apps and integrate with the Crumbs REST API

Hope this helps!

Cheers,

Abraham