Service Catalog Solution with Atlassian Cloud products

[Shannon]

We would like to migrate from on prem atlassian products to the cloud products over time. We run an internal, enterprise IT department. However, we are struggling with the lack of maturity of the cloud marketplace. One of the issues we have is that we need a Service Catalog offering over 100 services to internal customers, but content that's publicly accessible. We'd like the customer to be able to filter the results in two ways: Customer base and Category. We envision the customer base filter to the left with categories given as the main content. When they select what type of customer they are, Categories on display if they contain services applicable to their customer type. They can then select a category to see a listing of services. Each service would have a page with information about who is eligible, how to request it, what it costs, SLA's, etc.

Integrated with the catalog would be the confluence knowledge base (cloud) of self help articles related to the service as well as quick navigation to create a ticket (JSD Cloud) if technical help is desired. Chat and integration with Status page are desired but not essential. 

We've looked at the JSD Help Center for obvious ease of integration with KB and Ticketing, but we'd like to explore other options that might allow more features appropriate for a Service Catalog. 

Has anyone found a marketplace solution or other platfrom that integrates with cloud atlassian products and meets this need? 

[Shannon · Accepted solution]

I wanted to provide an update on our solution for this. We looked at using Confluence as our Service Catalog and we looked at using the JSD portal as our Service Catalog; however, neither or these solutions had market place apps robust enough to solve for the gaps we encountered with the atlassian cloud products out-of-the-box (at the time of our research). 

We chose to build our Service Catalog in Drupal because our current web presence is in Drupal. You can see what we've done here: https://tech.calpoly.edu/services

With Drupal as the front end, we have freedom to layout the catalog entry with the information we need to share with our customers about each service as well as offering the customer quick links to do the things they are coming to our website for: to find knowledge base info (links to confluence) or to request help (links to Jira Service Desk request forms). 

A viable option for other atlassian users might be to use Confluence as the Service Catalog, particularly if using the server suite of products or if you do not have a need for Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Our users rely on Google to find answers (as I imagine to be the case for most users), and because we can't custom domain Cloud Confluence, it will fail to rank high enough in Google search results to meet our goals. 

We went live mid summer 2019. There may be more solutions/features available via the marketplace currently than there were then, and the out-of-the-box atlassian offerings are constantly changing. I see the most promise in the Refined marketplace products for Confluence and JSD, but due to the limitations put on the developers of Cloud marketplace apps, I believe completely disparate 3rd party solutions are going to be the only way to provide a true Service Catalog for some time. 

[tokcum]

Dear Shannon,

thank you for providing these insights into your evaluation and reasoning. I'm also struggling with the options available in Atlassian Cloud. I'm used to Jira on Premise where especially with Insight many fundamental aspects required for a full blown ITSM is provided via a CMDB.

Btw, your portal looks great.

Kind regards,

Tobias

[Rodolfo Romero - Adaptavist]

Here there are some Apps in the Marketplace that might help you with your use case:

1. Extension for Jira Service Desk : Dynamic fields, request types and fields permissions.
2. Statuspage for Jira Service Desk : Include Statuspage messages into the Jira Service Desk Portal.
3. Refined - Structure and Theme JSD Cloud : Customize the look and feel of the Jira Service Desk Portal.
4. Insight - Asset Management : Asset Management within Jira and Jira Service Desk.
5. ProForma: Forms & Custom Fields for Jira : Add forms to the Jira Service Desk Portal.

These should give you a starting point that might help you to solve most of your requirements.

[tokcum]

Dear Rodolfo,

could you please elaborate how I can leverage the power of Insight within Atlassian Cloud (see also my post on Love Insight on Prem, Struggle with Insight in Cloud ). Thank you.

Kind regards,

Tobias