IT support - Log into JIRA, submit a request, or view existing requests

In September 2023, we upgraded to the cloud version of Jira, our IT ticket tracking system. It’s very similar to the old version but a few things have moved around. Here’s some information to help you find it, get logged in, enter new tickets, or see existing tickets.

Where to find the Jira ticket system

Go to the IT Customer Services webpage and click on the ‘Submit a Ticket’ button. You’ll be taken to the login page and then the Jira ticket system main/landing page. (Look around that page while you’re there. If there’s something noteworthy, you’ll see a notice here. You can access the Knowledgebase here to search for information related to the problem you’re having etc.).

How to log in

On the Help Center portal page, enter your email address (e.g. douglas.1brown@royalroads.ca)

Open

Click ‘Next’.

If your account is recognized, you will see the following confirmation screen. If you see a page asking for you to Sign Up, then go back and double check your RRU email address. Remember it needs to be your full RRU email address firstname.#lastname@royalroads.ca.

Open

If the system recognizes the RRU email address you provided, it knows that you are pre-setup to have access to the portal. Your “Atlassian account” is really your RRU account.

Click ‘Continue with Atlassian account’.

Depending on whether or not you’ve made a choice in the past for your browser to remember your credentials, you may be asked to sign in to Microsoft. You’ll see this URL and screen:

This is the same screen you will see if you are logging into any 365 application at RRU. Although the prompt asks for ‘email’, you must enter the long form of your username, like ‘d1brown@royalroads.ca’.

And then click ‘Next’.

Enter your usual password and click ‘Sign in’.

You may be asked if you wish to stay signed in:

If this is your first time logging in, you may be asked by Atlassian to answer some questions like this:

You may answer them or you may choose to skip them, depending on your preference.

The main/landing page

1 - Click on ‘Requests’ to see all your requests (if you signed in with an RRU email address)

2 - Click on your avatar to see your profile or to log out. If you don’t see the option to log out, you’re not logged in. In this case, you will not see existing requests nor will you be able to submit new requests.

3 - Start typing in the search bar to look for helpful Knowledgebase articles related to your issue. You may find the solution here and may not need to submit a request for service.

4 - Select the type of service request that best suits your needs.

Submit a request for service

Once you select the form that fits best with the problem you’re having, you’ll be asked to enter relevant information. We’ll use ‘System outages’ as an example.

1 - The upper section of the screen reminds you how you got here. In this example, you can see that we chose System outages. You can use the drop down options here to change these things if necessary.

2 - Many fields have helpful hints below them to guide you as you enter information.

3 - Fields marked with an asterisk are mandatory. (Note that we request you keep the mandatory summary field short. This helps us move the ticket along to the right group for service and it will help you later, when you are looking for a particular ticket.)

We will ask for different information, depending on the choice you made earlier when you began to enter an ticket. For system outages, we’ll ask what service is affected, what software is affected, and we’ll ask for a description of the problem you’re reporting, as seen below:

Most requests provide a space for you to include screenshots or files (see below) and we encourage you to do so. These help immensely when we’re troubleshooting, prevents a lot of back-and-forth Q&A, and helps us get to the root of the problem faster.

Other kinds of requests may ask for different information such as a due date if there’s a deadline we need to meet for you, or an approver if someone else needs to approve your request before we can action it (like a budget holder, manager, or resource owner), or what days of the week work best if we need to come to your office, etc.

View your requests

Click on ‘Requests’ to the left of your avatar picture in the upper right, then click on ‘Created by me’ to see a list of all requests you submitted previously.

Your requests will be displayed like this:

1 - Enter search criteria here to find issues about a certain topic

2 - Change the status to ‘waiting for approval' to see only issues waiting for approval (there are other statuses to choose from)

3 - Change this to ‘created by anyone’ to see all issues created for you even if someone else entered them on your behalf

4 - Change the request type to look for a specific kind of request

Notice the summary of all the tickets are short(ish) and specific. The examples show succinct ticket summaries by saying “Need x” instead of “I would like to have x”, for example. Short ticket summaries allow our agents to quickly see what the issue is and assign the work to the right team AND also allows you to find what you’re looking for more easily.

Add a external email address to an existing ticket manually

When a customer opens a ticket in Jira using their personal email address, OR when a technician opens a ticket using the Jira ticket system, a customer is created in Jira using that personal email address automatically.

However in some cases you might want to add a customer to a ticket after the ticket has been created. If the email address is not already in the ticket system, you cannot simply add it as the reporter or a participant.

You must first manually create an entry in Jira

• Go to https://royalroads.atlassian.net/jira/servicedesk/projects/ITCS/customers

• Click on the blue Add customers button

• Enter one or more personal email address in the Customer email field

• When you are done entering the email address(es), click OK

After about 10 seconds you can now add the email address into the participants or reporter field of a ticket.