What is the ITIL framework?
Information Technology Infrastructure Library, or ITIL, represents a set of best practices implemented worldwide for IT Service Management (ITSM). ITIL provides a framework around which companies can manage their IT support offering. The ITIL framework is standard practice within the industry and, as such, a pre-requisite for the majority of service desk applications used by companies, both large and small.
How does the ITIL framework fit into JIRA Service Desk?
Jira Service Desk became ITIL certified in 2016. This means that it is recognised as following the ITIL framework, and can be configured in such a way to allow users to use these practices as part of their support offering.
There are four specific processes within Jira Service Desk that meet the requirements of the ITIL framework. These are:
- Request fulfilment
- Incident management
- Problem management
- Change management
Setting up an ITIL framework in Jira Service Desk
The IT Service Desk Project Template is designed to provide basic, out-of-the-box support based on the ITIL framework. This template includes request types for Change, Incident, Problem, and Service Request, as well as corresponding fields and workflows.
The workflows are designed to be simple, so that businesses can quickly setup a service desk based on the ITIL framework and then customise it to their specific requirements. However, there are several workflows designed by Atlassian, and available within the Marketplace, that support a more complex, and typical, view of the ITIL framework. These workflows are:
- Change management for JIRA Service Desk
- Problem management for Jira Service Desk
- Service requests for Jira Service Desk
These workflows can be easily added, and where necessary, adapted, to meet the requirements of a service desk. There may be a requirement to edit the screens used within that project to make certain fields available to the end user, and it may also be necessary to add additional custom fields to the Jira instance for Service Requests, as the following fields are not included by default:
- Impact
- Urgency
- Pending reason
- Product categorization
- Operational categorization
These fields help support the ITIL framework for Service Requests, and in the case of Impact and Urgency can be used to help set the Priority of a Service Request, as we shall see later.
Why is Jira Service Desk a ‘good’ candidate for implementing ITIL processes?
Jira Service Desk has been designed and built to help support a service desk based on the ITIL framework.
By integrating it with Confluence, Atlassian’s Wiki offering, end users instantly have access to a document repository that can be used to support the service desk and add self-service.
Automation is also an important part of Jira Service Desk. By setting up automation rules as part of the Service Desk project, the Priority of a Service Request can be automatically set based on the Impact and Urgency values.
One of the other main advantages of Jira Service Desk is that it allows customers to raise what they see as distinctly different Request Types, but what Service Desk Agents see as the same basic Issue Type, using the same workflow. This allows default field values to be set against Request Types and helps minimise the amount of information needed from customers.
Key steps for setting up Jira Service Desk for ITIL
The key steps to setting up a fully functional service desk based on the ITIL framework are as follows:
- Setup a Jira Service Desk project using the IT Service Desk Project Template.
- Replace the workflows with the ITIL based workflows available in the Atlassian Marketplace.
- Add additional fields to the Service Request Issue Type to support the new workflow.
- Connect your Jira Service Desk project to a Confluence space to provide a document repository and allow for self-service.
- Make sure that common requests have a corresponding Request Type available in the project.
- Add automation rules for Service Requests based on the Impact and Urgency field values.
- Setup appropriate SLAs for your team to provide reporting.
Find out more about Jira Service Desk or contact our Atlassian experts for an informed chat.
