Jira ITSM/ Assets Advertised Features That Don't Exist?
Posted by Elegant-Wedding746@reddit | sysadmin | View on Reddit | 14 comments
New to my role - Asset Manager for a company with ~500 End Users and between 500-1000 Assets to track. My first order of business was to research and decide on ITAM Software to use in order to accomplish a few key things:
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Integrate with MDM Solutions (Azure/Intune, JAMF, etc)
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Allow for tracking of some non managed/ non IT assets - Starlink Satellites, Vehicles, Credit Cards
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Allows for tagging to Company/ Subsidiary, Location, Job/Project, and User in an intuitive way
Those are just some of the features but they were the most important ones. Jira TECHNICALLY can do all of those things, but not very intuitively whatsoever. I have been working on our instance (free trial thankfully) for a week and feel like I've accomplished almost nothing. The issues I've run into are:
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Data Manager Adapter must run client side using Windows Task Scheduler/ CRON in order to automate syncing of assets with MDM Solutions
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The Data Manager Import feature requires you to create "Saved Searches" to use, and when I follow their documents to do so there's flat out buttons missing in the Analytics page it says to create Saved searches in, making it impossible to use the import feature with Data Manager (Intune Integration)
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Assets Schema must be manually mapped, and has 0 user friendly dashboard. It's more of a DB than anything.
Does anyone else have experience as a Jira Admin using for ITSM and ITAM? I'm banging my head against the wall and worried that I have to now go tell my CFO that I have wasted a week of man hours on a tool that just flat out doesn't work as advertised. I've never had to tell a CFO something like that before and it's making me quite nervous.
NaturalMulberry7884@reddit
I use JSM Assets extensively, but have never actually bothered setting up Data Manager. Assets itself is super useful for all sorts of stuff, very little of which is actually ITSM. Data manager, the times I've fallen down that rabbit hole, feels like it's still in development.
Elegant-Wedding746@reddit (OP)
Do you happen to know of a way other than Data Manager to import, manage, and most essentially - assign/ unassign devices from end users?
ITAM was supposed to be my first deliverable, but it feels like to make it quick and easy to use you'd have to build out workflows and automations on the ITSM side.
I don't doubt Jira is robust, however taking months or more to learn, build, and use the system just isn't in the cards for me. Deployment in a month or less is pretty crucial.
llDemonll@reddit
Check the marketplace. There are add-ins that can sync with external sources. Most are paid, but you don’t have to deal with Data Manager which sucks.
agricoltore@reddit
Have two schemas, one for devices and one for users. Import all your users from your directory (entra or whatever) into the users schema, then import all your devices from your directory (assuming you can export as a CSV).
Elegant-Wedding746@reddit (OP)
This doesn't seem very automated. Not a snarky reply I promise 😅 but I'd love to have dynamic updates to said data which CSV imports are not.
starhive_ab@reddit
I think the idea is to create automations and processes to keep data updated once it's in Jira Assets. So painful first setup (getting your assets into any tools is not very fun) but once it's there, you have processes that automatically update it.
I used to work for Atlassian on Jira Assets and that's how many customers did it. But I'm a little out of date on what it can do.
I'd suggest our tool Starhive, which integrates well with Jira. But we don't have the MDM integrations today. Not pre-built anyway. Still, if you want to chat, book a demo with us and we can explore it with you.
mattberan@reddit
Ready for a free trial that goes perfectly smoothly?
Yes, I work for them - but InvGate Asset Management does EXACTLY what you want - AND - you'll believe it as soon as you get started.
30-day trial instance can be converted to your production instance.
Let me know if I can help in any way - DMs open or email me at matt.beran at invgate .com
AnTyx@reddit
Data Manager sucks. Don't use it.
Use whatever lowcode/nocode platform you like (or your own scripting) to pull data out of the source system's API, and transform it into the payload for the Assets API.
The Attributes view of the Assets schema is usable enough.
SetylCookieMonster@reddit
I work for the ITAM platform Setyl. We integrate with Jira Service Management, and have customers who use Jira for ITSM and Setyl for ITAM.
We cover (intuitively) all the tasks you're trying to accomplish:
- Integrate with MDMs including Azure, Intune, Jamf
- Track any kind of asset, from IT devices to cards, vehicles and much more (unlimited assets included in plan)
- Categorize assets based on company/entity/department/location, and allocate them to users
In addition to asset management, we offer software asset/license management, integrations with HR, SSO/IDP and many more systems, IT spend reporting, and compliance features for ISO/SOC 2. And our typical customer is around 100 to 1000 employees, so could be a good fit for you.
Zealousideal_Leg5615@reddit
I gave Jira Assets a shot but it felt like wrestling with a database, too much overhead for what we needed. Learned the hard way that sometimes simpler tools (like SIIT for daily tickets) actually work better depending on the team.
starhive_ab@reddit
Depending on the team is the key word. I used to personally work at Atlassian in the Jira Assets team, and it really depends what your business needs. If you're not fussed about curating which fields you have per assets or dependencies between assets, it's likely overkill.
If you do care about those things then working with the database gives you what you want.
Or you can take a leaf out of my current company's book and use AI to generate your asset database structure.
Ido013@reddit
The only experience I had was the inconsistent replication of Jira work done to ITSM. Unfortunately I was on the ITSM side so I didn't get to figure out what was going on, but I do remember it not working properly a lot of the time. Hope you have a better time with it
Think_Style_2307@reddit
Yep, same here.
TheDawiWhisperer@reddit
https://Ifuckinghatejira.com