Use cascading select lists to help support agents understand tickets faster
Support agents need to understand IT requests quickly so that they can categorize and resolve them. The problem is that users and customers often don’t provide enough information for agents to work with. This slows down the resolution process because the agent has to go back to the user with a string of questions.
The best way of making sure users provide support agents with the right information is to offer fields for them to select. That way you’re not pinning your hopes on users providing everything in the support request description.
Custom fields in native Jira Service Management (JSM) are too limited. For example, the native cascading select field only has two levels, which limits the amount of detail a customer can provide.
With Awesome Custom Fields, you can create as many levels as possible to cover your requirements. For example:
First Level: Category
Hardware
Software
Network
Second Level: Sub-Category
Hardware: Laptop, Printer, Monitor
Software: Installation, Bug Report, Access Request
Network: Connectivity, VPN, Firewall
Third level: Details
Software → Installation: Office Suite, Graphic Tools, Development Tools
This makes it easier for customers in the JSM portal to select the right options, and for support agents to get the right information.
Organize requests into queues using cascading select list values
A common problem for IT teams is having organize tons of support requests that aren’t properly categorized into the correct queues. The two-level cascading select list perpetuates this problem.
More accurate values from Awesome Custom Fields’ multi-level cascading select lists can be used to create queues. You could, for example, have a queue specifically for VPN-related issues. You can go further and use automation to automatically assign issues to the right team member based on one of the field selections.
This speeds up ticket resolution, and improves user satisfaction by ensuring support agents have all necessary information upfront.
Add color labels and other fields for at-a-glance understanding
Queues help agents triage work to be done, but visual elements are useful too.
Awesome Custom Fields’ color labels are an improvement on Jira’s standard labels (which are grey and basically invisible). Colors can help draw attention to things like whether a request is awaiting approval, so that the IT team can understand at a glance if they can action it.
There’s also no easy or visual way natively for agents to understand the impact or urgency of a request. Awesome Custom Fields’ priority matrix offers customers a way to select the level of impact and urgency using a slider.