As we progress through 2024, the landscape of IT Service Management (ITSM) continues to evolve. And, Atlassian is at the forefront, shaping the way organizations tackle service delivery. In this blog post, we’ll share what we’ve learned in the past few weeks about the state of Atlassian’s ITSM solutions. Plus, we’ll explore how their latest offerings are exceeding the demands of modern IT and business departments.
Atlassian ITSM: A Quick Overview
With a keen eye on innovation and user experience, Atlassian’s suite has become a critical tool in the arsenal of IT professionals looking to streamline their processes and elevate their service management to new heights. Jira Service Management Cloud, is at the center of their ITSM products. However, other products are evolving as well. Let’s unpack the advancements, the integrations, and the real-world applications that make Atlassian ITSM solutions in 2024 a subject worth watching.
JSM Aims for Happy Teammates
In October 2023, Atlassian announced the Airtrack acquisition. The aim of this acquisition was to enhance Jira Service Management with asset and configuration management capabilities. Moreover, this strategic move aims to provide enterprises with a single source of truth for assets, improving data coverage and quality. Basically, the acquisition underscores the Atlassian ITSM commitment to offering comprehensive service management solutions – including recent investments in automation, asset management, and AI capabilities. Furthermore, these capabilities ensure teammates using JSM will have accurate and easily readable information to help support their customers.
With the features from Airtrack, users will have the ability to:
- Construct assets (which will also give them the ability to push the number of assets in the product).
- Configure assets (i.e. how to integrate the asset with other systems more easily)
- Consume assets (make it easy to surface the asset data only when and where you need it).
In the near future, expect to see updates related to the expanding number of allowed assets in JSM Insight, automated templates, and an asset API using Forge.
Boards for JSM Data Center
Until recently, Jira Service Management Data Center didn’t have a native capability to provide Kanban boards for Service Projects. Instead, you’d have to complete a workaround. But with a recent update, Kanban boards are now available in JSM Data Center. Now, this gives teams the ability to map to Kanban and other board focused work using Jira Service Management.
Heightened Visibility
With the launch of Cloud Enterprise, JSM users could also take advantage of a newer Atlassian product called Atlassian Analytics. This product came from their acquisition of Chart.io. Atlassian enhanced its product since 2020, integrating Chart.io features, supporting data lakes and enabling users to export and integrate data sets.
Also, Atlassian Analytics provides a comprehensive solution for visualizing data across various teams and tools. For example, it offers:
- Ready-to-use templates for different management needs.
- A robust visual SQL interface for custom analyses.
- Versatile data visualization options, including charts and tables.
- Users can also connect to external databases such as Snowflake and Google BigQuery. Plus, they can do so while fostering collaboration through embedded commenting and detailed permission settings.
Atlassian Analytics is designed to accelerate decision-making for DevOps, Agile, ITSM, and business teams by integrating data from multiple Atlassian products. Presently, Atlassian Analytics only pertains to the information in the Jira products. In the near future, Atlassian plans to include data from products like Confluence in the data lake expansion. Another visibility item in the short term roadmap for Atlassian is the JSM SLAs. Atlassian will expand their ability for users to create hierarchical goals. The aim with this enhancement is to make it easier to build goals so you don’t hit SLA limits prematurely.
Faster Time to Go Live and Easier Implementation with Atlassian ITSM Forms
According to the G2Crowd:
- Jira Service Management surpasses ServiceNow in implementation speed, becoming operational in around 1.5 months, compared to ServiceNow’s five months.
- JSM surpasses the average implementation time of 3.19 months for all ITSM tools assessed by G2Crowd.
- In terms of implementation quality, Jira achieves an 83% score, higher than ServiceNow’s 72% and the average index score of 75%.
- Overall, Jira Service Management leads with an impressive score, reflecting its user-friendly setup, quicker adoption rates, and other key performance metrics.
JSM aims to enhance forms in the coming months, with recent updates emphasizing ease and future advancements to unify configuring various request types seamlessly. Additionally, Atlassian introduced the capability for Atlassian Intelligence to generate different request types within your JSM instance. Atlassian also released the ability to have Atlassian Intelligence create the different request types in your JSM instance as well. We think this is a great opportunity for Atlassian ITSM users.
Customer Service Management Advancements in JSM
The Atlassian ITSM solution has also enhanced Customer Service templates for those using JSM. This provides a better customer service experience to its end users. Now, the updated template can track real-time progress, and customer context fields through the entire workflow. Additionally, customer context fields are now in the issue view itself.
Delightful Atlassian ITSM Customer Experiences
The Atlassian virtual agent has gone to general availability and has been receiving plenty of kudos already. The virtual assistant is easily configurable and is integrated immediately with OpenAI. Plus, the system also has other integrations, such as Slack. During setup, Atlassian targeted a no-code or low-code approach, emphasizing the virtual assistant’s Intent Flow to guide users to desired outcomes. After six months of in-house use, Atlassian reports over 1000 hours saved in communication and more than 50% utilization of the virtual agent in their scenarios.
Below is an example of how the virtual agent operates. In these examples, we are using the agent in a Slack channel. The ‘ask-it’ example demonstrates users seeking IT assistance, like connecting to the office network, through the virtual assistant.
In this ask-hr example, the user will need to get specific information that may or may not be publicly available.
In this final example, the user is asking the virtual agent for information about a bike locker. But first, the virtual agent will need to know information. For example, what office the user is based out of because the bike lockers work differently in different locations.
Atlassian has recognized not all customers will want to use Confluence for their knowledge base. That could be for cost reasons, usability reasons or some other reason. But what originally started as a push to use Confluence as the knowledge base is now turning into a roadmap to integrations with other tools.
Atlassian Intelligence
Atlassian, like many, is investing in AI for JSM. A notable feature is the “Summarize button,” aiding agents in efficiently managing lengthy tickets. This tool addresses concerns of missing information in text-heavy tickets, enhancing agent productivity and ensuring seamless ticket ownership. As a former support team manager, this feature proves valuable, enabling agents to grasp ticket context swiftly and alleviate challenges associated with lengthy tickets.
AI is also added into the agent’s responses. Features such as the “be empathetic” in the response feature will take the agent’s text and reword it to express the specific emotion selected. Then, from there, agents can edit the text to make it short, or longer as needed.
Another feature going live soon is the “blue underline” on special terms. If you’re like Atlassian, everything has a code name or project name. You can now establish a glossary for project names or terms in JSM tickets. These terms, highlighted with a blue underline, offer details upon hover, providing context and meaning.
Scalable Atlassian ITSM Deployment
On the Enterprise front, Atlassian ITSM has launched support for 20,000 JSM Agents. Consequently, it is positioning itself as a leading ITSM solution by offering extensive capabilities without agent or asset limitations. Notably, JSM Insights will soon accommodate a remarkable 3 million assets. That means Atlassian remains committed to being a top-tier ITSM solution in the market.
Also, Atlassian has been working very hard on the compliance front for Atlassian Cloud. HIPAA compliance for the virtual agent is coming, and FedRAMP certification is on the horizon. Again, these features are key for Enterprise adoption of Atlassian’s ITSM platform.
Lastly, Atlassian is ahead of the curve when it comes to releasing new locations for their data residency solution. You can read more about data residency with Atlassian Cloud here.
What’s Next?
As we look ahead to 2024, Atlassian’s ITSM solutions are leading the way with significant enhancements, particularly Jira Service Management, bolstered by strategic acquisitions and integrations. This blog post has unpacked the new capabilities. For example, asset and configuration management updates, enhanced customer service templates, and AI-driven features such as a virtual assistant and Atlassian Intelligence.
Considering how Atlassian’s evolving ITSM solutions can benefit your organization? Start a conversation with SPK and Associates, your trusted Atlassian Gold Solution Partner.
