Simple help desk support project with email

[Tyson Hoffman]

I am currently managing customer support with a team of 3 people part time.  Each of the support agents has a "full time" job but we all try to service the support requests as best as we can.

Right now we use a shared email inbox.  We attempt to use flags, categories etc to keep track of who is dealing with what.  This isn't working.

What I would like to do is have an email come in and create a Jira Issue.  Then assign the ticket to one of the support agents.  They would use comments to reply by email to the customer.

I can't seem to find a way to do this, but I am somewhat new to Jira.

Is it possible to use comments to send and receive emails in a common thread?  These would all be non-jira users as well.

[Bastian Stehmann · Accepted solution]

Hi @Tyson Hoffman ,

your use case is perfect for jira service desk.

You can connect your service desk project with an email address, so that all emails received will create an issue. 

You can communicate with the sender of the emails by commenting the issue and can also create internal comments for your communication with your support team.

[Tyson Hoffman]

I thought that was the case, but I was hoping to find a lower cost alternative.

We have 10 Jira users but only 2.5 of them actually do support.  We are going to have to pay 10*10 (I think that's the amount) per month which is way beyond what I can afford.  

I was hoping I could accomplish this using our current Jira cloud setup somehow.

I love Jira but the $/person/month regardless of function or usage gets expensive quickly.

[Bastian Stehmann]

Hi,

Regarding the price, if you need a maximum of 3 agents, you can even try the free plan, which has some limitations but has all basic functionality. 

If you need all functionality, you will need the standard plan, but that is for 3 agents also only 10 $, so you will be at 20$ / month then.

[Tyson Hoffman]

Does the billing work differently than the marketplace apps?

We have 10 active jira users but only 3-4 that will be using Service Desk.  I assumed that if I use Service Desk it will license it to all 10 active users and not just the ones I want to use it. 

If I am wrong then I will have to look into that.

[Bastian Stehmann]

Yes, you can choose which users should get the service desk "license" and what users only have the jira core or software license.

Regarding the marketplace, you are right, you always have to match that your number of jira users.

But the highest number of users is the relevant number. If you have 10 jira core/software users and 3 service desk agents, you must get the app for 10 users, no matter if it is for jira core/software or the service desk.