Integrating Customer Support Issues into Multiple Agile Boards (How To?)

[MikeekiM]

I run our customer support operations, and we run into issues that we'd like to manage separately than just adding to the larger bug-base in Jira.

As a result, I have created a new project for Customer Support where we will house all of our customer support related issues.

As you can imagine, these issues cross different agile teams... People report issues with our consumer products, our enterprise product, our online ordering system, etc... Each of these has their own development team and agile board.

What is the best way to integrate my customer support issues into all of these various agile boards?

Can I (should I) add my project to each of these agile boards? And if so, how do I do it? I have been trying to figure out how to configure a board so that I can add a project, but I can't figure it out.

Or is there a better way to accomplish what I am attempting to do here?

Thanks!

[Danielle Zhu · Accepted solution]

I think this is a sensible approach. You may want to consider cloning the issue that "makes the grade" and then moving the issue to the target project. The benefit is you automatically get a "cloner" issue link between the two issues. The drawback of that is you may not like the cloner link but want a better link name.

[MikeekiM]

Yes, we are using Greenhopper simplified workflows...and now I understand the restriction and why it has been difficult/impossible to add a project to an existing agile board.

You are drawing a similar conclusion that I am starting to come to...

So I should manage all of my Customer Support issues in my own project, and the ones that "make the grade" should be moved/copied (I prefer to copy it to maintain support visibility in my own project) to the appropriate agile board for inclusion in the backlog of a defined sprint.

My guess is that I should probably also "relate" the two issues so that I can keep track of the disposition of each of my Customer Support issues (can I do that? is there a better solution?)

Thanks for your inputs... Much appreciated!

[Dave]

That sounds like the best way to go. Creating a relation between the two issues is called "issue linking" in JIRA. Details on setting that up are at https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/AOD/Configuring+Issue+Linking and while creating the links is pretty straight forward, the docs for that are at https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/AOD/Creating+Links

Best,

-dave

[Dave]

Are you using Greenhopper simplified workflows for your projects? If so, you won't be able to integrate additional projects - you would need to curate the Customer Support project and move/copy issues to their related agile team project.

If you're not using the simplified workflows, you can add those related issues by including them in your filter. For example, you might add AND (project=CS AND component=ENTERPRISE), or use a different field to designate which team it would belong to.