How asset reporting with Custom Charts empowers ITSM support teams

For IT service management (ITSM) teams, managing a service desk for all employees across an entire organization can be daunting. Especially if it’s a large enterprise with hundreds of employees and thousands of assets. Often, the setup is: employees submit support requests using a service desk tool, and the assets that belong to those requests live in a separate database. If only there was a tool that did it all – a service desk and a configuration management database (CMDB) all in one… well, who’d have thought it. There is!

Your ITSM assets and support tickets in one place

Atlassian’s Jira Service Management (JSM) premium and enterprise offerings have a built-in CMDB called Assets for Jira (formerly Insight Asset Management). Jira admins set up Assets to serve as an inventory to track the items that belong to each employee, for example, all customer devices such as laptops and mobile phones. It helps streamline the support process for the entire organization, saving time and effort for both employees submitting requests and the ITSM agents assisting them.

With the help of Jira automation, when users submit a support ticket related to their device, the asset information can be automatically populated on the ticket. It’s a huge time saver when agents can see all pertinent asset details right there, instead of having to hop to a separate application to and go looking for it.

Oftentimes too, an employee submitting requests does not know the information about the related asset off the top of their head. It can deter them from submitting requests to the service desk if they’re asked for information that seems too complex to find and fill out. Automating the asset information on their request becomes a huge benefit here as well – it creates a straightforward experience for the customer, meaning they’ll continue to use the service desk to get support.

Reporting on Assets for Jira metrics in JSM

Once we obtain the information from the submitted requests, agents then need to be able to access it quickly and understand it easily. While they have the Jira Service Management queues, these do not provide a centralized consolidation of the received information. That’s where Jira dashboards and reporting gadgets come in handy!

Custom Charts for Jira is a dashboard reporting app that lets you make all kinds of charts and reports across all your projects using a single gadget. Asset data stored in custom fields, plus other information collected on support tickets, can be visualized in a variety of different ways to make ITSM dashboards that are more useful and fit for purpose. A dashboard filled with the right reports allows for quicker troubleshooting and helps agents easily prioritize their work.

Asset Object custom fields come with Custom Charts for Jira on both Cloud and Data Center (if you’re using Cloud, be sure to follow these steps to get the connection set up first!).

Let’s take a closer look at some example reports using Custom Charts and Assets for Jira objects.

Tracking hardware requests

If Jira admins track employee hardware in Assets, when the asset information auto-populates upon submission of support requests, that data can easily be reported on using Custom Charts.

In the Custom Charts Issue List gadget below, we are displaying all open Broken Hardware Requests in the service desk project. The 2 columns, “Device ID” and “User”, are custom Asset Object fields in Jira. By pulling the objects into Custom Charts, agents have more context around the specific item that is broken and who it belongs to. That way they can troubleshoot much more efficiently. We’re including several other fields on the list as well, including the summary of the ticket, the date it was created, who it was assigned to, and the time remaining on the “Time to Resolution” SLA.

To make the list even more effective for agents, we’ve used a feature included in Issue List called “Quick Filters”. Quick Filters allow users to add in filters (either existing Jira filters or by creating a custom filter right in the gadget) that can be used by dashboard viewers to filter down the data on the list. Agents can use the “Issues Breaching SLA Today” quick filter to easily see which Broken Hardware Requests need immediate action.

Which applications are down?

Let’s say that we are also tracking software applications and licenses in this project. We can use a custom Asset Objects field (created by a Jira admin) to pull in the software objects and display them directly on Jira issues. We’ve included that data in our Custom Charts pie chart below, which displays the problems submitted to the service desk by the software or application impacted.

This can help ITSM teams understand if a specific app or platform is causing the majority of issues for our customers. If it is, it could mean there’s a larger, more widespread incident occurring. For example, in the chart below, we can see the majority of problems are related to Jira, prompting a deeper investigation into that platform.

Location-based customer support

The more information we create in Assets and then store on Jira issues, the more detailed the team can get with their Custom Charts reports.

Often, admins create an Asset Object for each office or warehouse location. They then add the location of each piece of hardware. Knowing where assets are located can help make sure that the request is assigned to an appropriately located agent. It can also help the ITSM team understand inventory levels.

In our example below, Andy in Amsterdam needs a new laptop. Since we have the location of laptops in stock stored in Assets, we can take a look at the inventory to see if we have the necessary device to replace Andy’s laptop in the office already. Not only do we have the location as an Issue List column, but we also have the user who owns any currently assigned asset, as well as the ID of their device. By including these details as columns, the list can serve as a queue for the agents, providing helpful insight into the open support requests.

Another way to visualize the Asset data is to use a Custom Charts bar chart showing the number of tickets coming from certain office locations. In the example below, the size of the bars gives an immediate and attention-grabbing visual indication as to which locations are raising the most and least requests. It could prompt a discussion about whether the Austin office has aging equipment and needs to invest in some new kit for everyone.

Conclusion

When enterprises use Assets for Jira and Jira Service Management in tandem, it makes for a powerful ITSM support solution. Managing all support and asset information in one single system streamlines the entire process for both agents and customers, creating an overall positive experience for all parties.

But it’s being able to build reports on the data on a single dashboard with Custom Charts that can massively boost the responsiveness and effectiveness of the ITSM team. This is because it empowers them to spot patterns and draw insights that they wouldn’t be able to if they were only looking at individual issues or issue queues.

If you have any questions about Assets for Jira and how to use it with Custom Charts in your Jira Service Management instance, reach us here.