Unbiased Opinion on Jira for Service Management?
Posted by lokzwaran@reddit | sysadmin | View on Reddit | 49 comments
Looking to evaluate Jira for Service management for a carved out department while the entire company of 20k+ users use Service Now.
Anyone used it before? Potential pitfalls? Upsides? LoE for initial setup and uplift?
everforthright36@reddit
Have used both. Jira works fine and is highly customizable in my experience. SNOW is a bigger investment for mostly the same from an ITSM perspective. If you're already with snow I'd probably stay there though unless your decision is financial.
LPso_B@reddit
I've seen several SNOW implementations for ticketing, but frankly, I've come across better-designed systems. Autotask, for instance, is a much more appealing option compared to SNOW. Even open-source alternatives offer a more intuitive and efficient experience IMO
FluidGate9972@reddit
We got a demo of Jira ITSM a few months back. It’s so laughably bad we almost felt sorry for the team that demoed it against other options like ServiceNow and TopDrsk.
lokzwaran@reddit (OP)
Thanks for the response! Did you get a demo of their OpsGenie integration as well ?
FluidGate9972@reddit
No, we were only interested in ITSM. But how any one would choose that instead of, well, literally any other option is beyond us. We were truly baffled by how bad it was, lol.
Visible_Spare2251@reddit
It makes sense for teams already using Confluence or Jira.
FluidGate9972@reddit
I'd rather go back to managing incidents in a shared Excel sheet on a fileserve than deal with Jira tbh.
Fighter_M@reddit
Atlassian is fine! It’s not without its quirks, but you’re definitely not feeling ripped off.
MrGarak1@reddit
For the love of god please make sure it’s Jira Cloud lol.
sryan2k1@reddit
It's half baked, like most Atlassian products. With that heavy of an investment in SNOW, what isn't it doing that you want? I'd make SNOW work the way you want it to rather than break off a chunk that it's perfectly capable of.
lokzwaran@reddit (OP)
I know Service Now is perfectly capable of many things - but the turn around time for new requests and integrations are in months not days because of how it is managed right now.
So to get a fresh start - we are thinking of branching out greenfield into JSM or other tools
sryan2k1@reddit
Look into FreshService (The ITSM version of FreshDesk) if you want something a little bit less......large.
tgwill@reddit
YMMV with FreshService. Was great when we started.
Seems like they went whole hog on “AI” and I have not seen any improvements in the product in two years.
M1llh0useNinja@reddit
We’re looking at getting out of Fresh into SNow or JSM for the sheer number of “no it can’t do that” responses we get from Fresh support.
tgwill@reddit
We used to have a good cadence with them and they were enhancing the product continuously. Even adapting the requests we were making.
Then after 9 months, it was nothing but lip service. Seems like they are pulling back and cost cutting. Glad we only use it for ITSM. Couldn’t imagine being stuck with it for CRM/Call Center
lokzwaran@reddit (OP)
Nice thanks
NoyzMaker@reddit
Maybe propose having a resource on your team build out your needs with ServiceNow team?
ArieHein@reddit
Dont mix and match. JSM is also being merged into Jira so it wont be its own product.
If you guys already use Jira, drop ServiceNow.
You should be dropping ServiceNow anyway, but that requires someone in tour top execs having balls.
NoyzMaker@reddit
Nothing wrong with ServiceNow but it can constantly get over customized or poorly supported by organizations.
its_tricky83@reddit
I come from using JIRA Service Management and now use ServiceNow in a different agency.
JIRA was set up properly, suited to the agency; and therefore it was awesome.. however I hear of many businesses where it's not setup properly or configured to the business requirements and work methods.
On the flip side, I am now in an agency using ServiceNOW and am constantly baffled and confused by it; and generally when I go down the rabbit hole for answers it comes back as "It wasn't ever set up quite correctly for our environment"..
So long story short, both are great when set up properly and configured/tailored for the business.
I do miss a LOT of functionality of JIRA Service Management though. Heck, even dealing with formatting of my tickets, comments and messages in Snow annoys the crap out of me. Don't even get me started on linkable text!
Maybe Snow has better integrations with other services though!
Atlassian are kind of in a pickle about how they transition customers to the cloud-only equiv for their product range; which is proving to be difficult because a lot of Onprem functionality isn't available in their cloud offerings.
NoyzMaker@reddit
As with every SaaS tool it is down to configuration and customization done. Lots of companies over engineered the implementation to make them frustrating.
NoyzMaker@reddit
Why not just use ServiceNow if your company already has it?
Capt91@reddit
Jira usually needs another 3rd party integration to do basic features, takes months to get configured and confuses clients
Don't do it
IOORYZ@reddit
Do you have to work together with the other teams that stay in servicenow? How are you going to achieve that? If it takes too long to get your work flows and possible integrations build in ServiceNow, how long do you expect to wait to have the integration build with a new tool?
A second tool with the same main functionality is usually not a solution that adds value to the company in the long term is my experience.
Setting up tools for business critical processes take time and it's better to take more time to do it good the first time with knowledgeable people, than to botch something together with the best of intentions in a few days.
malikto44@reddit
First, I'd avoid Service Now, unless you have a GOOD (emphasis on good) consulting team that can get it going from the ground up, done right, and not have every manager throw their stuff in. Otherwise you will have an unusable mishmash.
If you use Atlassian products, I'd recommend considering the Data Center versions, if possible. On-prem may not have the cool stuff the cloud does, but you at least know you have backups, and you know where your data is.
As for JSM, it isn't bad. It is what you make of it for the most part, and badly configured, it is just as worthless as SNOW.
Overall, Atlassian support isn't bad... I've been able to unwedge stuff with their help, but sometimes you will run into stuff that makes you just go "huh?"
sva187@reddit
Remindme! 5 days
sva187@reddit
!remindme 5 days
llDemonll@reddit
I’m a big Jira fan. I have nice things to say about it whenever someone posts here because I do think it’s a good tool.
Jira Service Management misses some basic features of a ticketing system.
You can’t combine tickets, you have to mark as a duplicate. You could configure some fancy automation rule to somewhat combine them, but you have to manually add users to the “primary” ticket.
There’s no real way to have time-based tasks happen after-the-fact. Say I want to auto-create a follow-up task 7 days later? You can’t do that out of the box. Any time-based tasks are not natively supported without some programming.
Changing status between “waiting for customer” and “waiting for support”? Not inherently there. Needs an automation rule.
No tool is going to be perfect. What you need to do is build your workflow around the tool is meant to work, not around how you feel it should work.
If your company is on ServiceNow, why introduce JSM?
Spiritual_Brick5346@reddit
the honest answer is there are so many solutions for companies and they all promise the same thing
they all cost a lot of money but if someone spent the time to code and configure it, it can probably do what you want, but that's a problem in itself
Sasataf12@reddit
There's no point asking about other services if you don't let us know what gaps you're trying to bridge.
So my question is why are you looking to move away from Service Now?
lxnch50@reddit
Configured properly and having workflows designed for it, I think it works well. The problem is that people don't want to spend the time and money it requires to get people set up for success with it. Most companies I've been involved with just jam their legacy workflows into it in a way it wasn't designed for. So, they need addons that cost more money and only band aid the situation.
IamHydrogenMike@reddit
“Our workflows aren’t currently working, we need something that we can customize the workflow better and make them more efficient..”
— Jams their current workflow back into JSM and then annoyed it doesn’t work right…
The software isn’t the problem…
Lemonwater925@reddit
Buggy as all heck. We are using it and the only people who like it are mgmt for getting reports. Had one meeting and outlined my issues with it. Appears I am not willing to accept change. So much for the company initiative to speak freely
UCFknight2016@reddit
Its a clusterfuck so far. We just switched from Ivanti earlier this year and the rollout has been rough.
chandleya@reddit
JSM is awfully low capability. Couple of steps ahead of being a shared mailbox. I do not miss it at all.
dab_penguin@reddit
Running it for all IT support and it's not bad if you have the expertise to manage it. There's a bit of a learning curve to that but the automation capabilities are pretty cool imo
lokzwaran@reddit (OP)
Yeah the automations and CMDB were cool and the atlassian heavy integrations are cool too
dab_penguin@reddit
CMDB? You mean the asset management piece? It's cool, but pricey. We didn't go with that mainly because the scanning was LAN based and we are 100% remote
lokzwaran@reddit (OP)
Not bundled into the pricing ? Anything with 50+ agents the Asset management part is bundled in
dab_penguin@reddit
Yeah we don't have that many agents lol
Connection-Terrible@reddit
I’m Sysadmin in a development environment. I checked out JSM and it felt like it was better for supporting a product. Really orients towards linking up with “Regular” Jira to connect support to bugs. Right now I’m a small shop and have osticket stood up, but I don’t really use a ticketing system. Probably soon when I have others to collaborate with.
lokzwaran@reddit (OP)
My team operates similarly too system admin for a particular set of products. It does make sense to streamline
Er2theWin@reddit
We're dropping it for Zendesk.
lokzwaran@reddit (OP)
Internal customers too ?
Er2theWin@reddit
Yup. Supposedly, our automation team has a cool way to migrate everything over from jira.
lokzwaran@reddit (OP)
Nice
yeaaaaah95@reddit
JSM leaves a lot to be desired tbh. We switched to it from TeamDynamix, and while TD isn't the best, I would give anything to go back to it from JSM.
mrjamjams66@reddit
Disclaimer: this probably isn't "unbiased"
I am using Jira Service Management currently and it feels like it leaves a lot to be desired in ways of time management, tracking issues and general QoL features to streamline your workflow.
Adjusting settings for backend things like ticket workflows, backup administration, user management, fields etc all just feel fragmented and not super well thought out.
I assume it's a fairly powerful tool if you learn to configure it, but I'm very new to it and have never had to try and design this sort of thing before.
I am coming from ConnectWise Manage which is about as fully featured as I can think of. However that's basically where most of my career experience has come from up to this point. I never had a hand in the backend setup or administration here either, though, so I'd have to assume that's also complicated.
Even not understanding that aspect super well, it's very tailorable to your users preferences. A user can customize the layout of basically everything how they want it.
Every button and toggle in every window feels cohesive once you learn the tool, and it feels like it offers tons of flexibility over Jira Service Management (at least as far as I've been able to determine so far).
I do feel I must emphasize my understanding of either tools I've compared here is not incredibly deep and leans ore heavily to where I've spent most of my time. I can see lots of potential for Jira Service Management but still think CW has a lot of great QoL features I'd love to see in Jira.
lokzwaran@reddit (OP)
Thank you , that helps!