Customer Support agents communication with Engineers in Jira require them to have a licence

[Adri]

I'd like to get some insights about the possible improvements around this flow, to reduce licensing costs.

Current Flow:

1. Customers contact CuSu (let's assume via phone).
2. CuSu creates a "Support Request" ticket in Jira for Engineering.
3. Engineers and CuSu communicate via comments until resolution.
4. CuSu informs the customer (let's assume via phone).

Cost Inefficiency: Licensing all CuSu users (approx. 50) as Jira users is costly ($425/month), as they mainly need commenting access.

Desired Outcome: A cost-effective solution within Jira Cloud for CuSu to communicate with Engineers on support tickets, without full Jira Software or expensive JSM agent licenses.

Specific Questions:

• Are there alternative Jira workflows or configurations to achieve this?
• Are there cost-effective communication features or plugins?
• Is there a way to give limited access to the JSM portal?
• Are there integration options?
• Is there a way to integrate an external tool to comment without a license?

Goal: Reduce monthly costs while maintaining efficient communication between CuSu and Engineers within Jira Cloud.

[Kai Becker]

Hi @Adri 

welcome to the community and thank you for your question.

JSM has the feature of collaborators. And this role is a perfect fit for your engineers.

This will allow them to take a look into the JSM requests BUT only allow them to make internal comments. This way you can keep the one face to the customer approach.

If you still need them to transition issues or handle external comments you can use Automation Rules alongside a manual trigger to handle these features and making actions with an agent as rule actor.

To read more about collaborators, please read here: https://support.atlassian.com/jira-service-management-cloud/docs/what-users-and-roles-are-there-in-jira-service-management/

[Adri]

Thanks for the info Kai.

The thing is... the ones creating the tickets in JSM are customer support people, and the engineers should be able to communicate with them and manage the tickets. But I find it quite expensive to have them all inside JVM... 

So, even if the tool is for this, it's much cheaper to have the 50 customer support users in jira, than paying for the 50 engineers to be also agents in JSM. 

I find it hard to see the benefit here 🤔

[Dan Breyen]

Hi @Adri what Kai was referring to was if your Jira users are setup as Collaborators, they are not using JSM licenses.  Only Agents, (anyone interacting with your customers) are counted as JSM users.  They can interact with tickets, review comments, make Internal Comments, but they are not interacting with customers.  If you have 50 Customer Support people that all would be interacting with customers, they would need to be setup as Agents.  

Your 50 Engineers are acting as collaborators and wouldn't necessarily need to be using additional JSM licenses.  

I'd also refer you to that article Kai linked too.

Hope that helps.

[Kai Becker]

Hi @Adri 

I'm not quite sure if I got you right. Just to make sure we are on the same page:

• There are 50 support people that talk to customers and open tickets for them in JSM? 
• There are 50 developers that work in Jira and need to comment on tickets and talk to
  • the support people?
  • the customers?

From your first question you said something like engineers should act as agents without a JSM license. This is not going to work, like @Dan Breyen explained in his post.

[Adri]

Hi @Kai Becker 

I've updated the initial question to explain my usecase better :) 

(it didn't allow me to add a new comment so similar to the initial one )

[Kai Becker]

Hi @Adri 

I don't think there will be a cheaper way. If the CuSu users should create issues and/or make comments they need to have a valid license. There is no chance to achieve your Desired Outcome.
So this would lead us to at least:

• 50 users Jira for engineers
• 50 users Jira for CuSu
• with the downside of not having a portal for customers (they would need to call via phone)

Other option would be:

• 50 users Jira for engineers
• 50 agents Jira Service Management for CuSu (Engineers can make internal comments)
• Plus: portal for customers
• Minus: more expensive

Third option (nothing I would recommend):

• 50 agent users for the enigneers (and no real Jira project)
• CuSu will be Customer in the project to make requests for the customers (only contact would be telephone)

Hopefully this makes things a little clearer even it is not what you were looking for.

[Adri]

Thanks a lot for the help :D