Take top entry of queue

[Bruce Schlueter]

Hi out there,

we are using Jira Service Desk and have multiple queues ordered by SLA. Right now it is possible to ignore the order and just decide to take a lower priorized ticket. Is there any way to restrict this? 

Or if this is not possible is there any possibility to build a report that shows this up so that we can find the reason behind taking a different ticket?

Thanks for any ideas

Bruce

[Jack Brickey · Accepted solution]

It sounds like you are looking for a queue manager that prioritizes agent’s work by handing out issues, controlling what they work on first. Personally I would view this as an employee training issue. That personal perspective aside let me answer your question. :-)

I don’t know of any way to hide issues of lower priority if higher priority issues are open and unassigned and not sure you really would want to do that. However, you could arrange your queues in a manner that conveys your process. Consider setting up queues as follows (example only tweak to fit needs):

• Triage - newly opened issue that need to be assessed for validity and priority 
• Highest - pull from this queue first
• High - if no Highest 
• Medium - if no Highest or High
• etc

you can easily monitor the teams behavior using filters and dashboards. 

[Bruce Schlueter]

Hi Jack,

thanks for your ideas. We already have different queues for different teams with an own 1st Level queue in front to take care of validity and priority.

And of course we did give out the order to pull tickets from the top and find an organizational solution. ;-)

We also did have a "queue manager" who was the most hated person. So we tried to hand over the responsibilty into the teams and we did hope that the teams would organize themselves (better).

But humans being the way we are do tend to pick out the raisins.

Therefore we are looking into possibilties to force users taking the top issue or if this is not possible (which I believe) find some kind of reporting that shows up such events. 

Do you have any idea on how a filter would look like? I know how to get to the SLA times like elapsed or remaining but I am lacking an idea on how to find a ticket with less remaing time when a ticket is taken out of the queue.

Regards, Bruce

[Jack Brickey]

if you want to say fire an event or send an email each and every time someone transitions a lower priority issue to In Progress when there are open higher priority I would suggest looking at a scripting solution (Scriptrunner, Power Scripts). I don't use either currently so can't really assist w/ the syntax.

[Bruce Schlueter]

using a scripting solution may be a possibilty. We have come across a few challenges where we did think about Scriptrunner. We will have to take a look at such a solution.

Thanks anyhow

[Alicja Snarska]

Hey,

it's not a perfect solution, but what seems to work is to have a strict SLA, visible for everyone, that the team agrees on and has to deliver. For higher priority, simply set up a shorter SLA.

If they want to start with easy ones, cool, it's normal, but when they see that something difficult is close to the deadline, they have to get on with it. Then you can implement minor penalties, like really minor - like a reprimand, just for the sake of it, if the team doesn't deliver on time. 

You can try to find technical solutions and I keep my fingers crossed for that, but it seems like a human level problem that can be solved through a different management solutions as well.

Regards!

[Bruce Schlueter]

Hey Alicja,

thanks for your input. We are are working with differnet SLAs depending on impact and urgency. And to be honest we do not want to work with penalties. We do believe it is better to have the teams organize themselves in a better way. At this point we see the problem but we are unsure, if using something like Scriptrunner to create reports is not over the top.

We do believe that a self organized team is far better than working with penalties that might bring in frustration and in the end may end up in fluctuation of agents which is the worst case.

The idea was just to give hints on where the teams could improve but without using any further addons. 

As you say this is a human level problem and therefore we keep up with reminding everybody about our working order. 

Regards, Bruce 

[Alicja Snarska]

Hey, 

I do believe that self organizing teams are better as well and wouldn't encourage penalties, but if your team repetitively does not meet your goals than some steps need to be taken in order to restore priorities.

Motivation can be also positive - some additional rewards for completeting priority tickets.

Teams can be fully self organized when they are accepting the business priorities and are working towards the same goal as you do. When they keep ignoring your asks than maybe people in this team are not reliable enough to self organize their work? Or maybe they weren't give enough responsibility and don't understand how important it is?

Regards,

Alicja

[Jack Brickey]

@Alicja Snarska, agree completely. As a long time manager I believe in empowering folks to manage their time. Using SLAs will allow you to easily monitor time-managment issues and then work w/ the team to correct.

[Bruce Schlueter]

@Alicja Snarska @Jack Brickey all that you are saying is right and I do believe that we need a shift in the minds. It is difficult if in a team nobody or not everybody is willing to take over responsibilty or understands the importance. And yes, this is then also a management problem of not being able to transport this to the agents.