Absences Auto-Reply for JSM

You are out of office, and you would rather not leave your customers tickets without any answer? Don't worry, our Absences Auto-Reply for JSM will take care of it!

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Inspiration

Our idea was formed by the needs we experienced while working with Jira Service Management. There were days when none of us were in the office to respond to created or commented Jira tickets. As we wanted to avoid leaving customers without answers, we thought having an application that would automatically inform customers about our absence on such days would be very helpful.

In that way, we decided to create Absences Auto-Reply for JSM!

What it does

With the Auto-Reply Absences for JSM, you can add days or weeks in which it is impossible or difficult to contact you via Jira Service Management. For your convenience, there are two types of calendars available:

  • a global one for all activated projects,
  • a local one for a particular project.

In this way, every ticket created or commented on will receive information about your absence and how long it will last. In addition, we present you the additional functionality — changing the ticket for chosen status for different issue types. After needed configuration, the application will change the ticket to a new chosen status, for instance “Pending”, and stop SLAs counting time.

How we built it

To bring our idea to life, we believed the best we can use is Forge. For our purpose we decided to use custom UI as it was the best choice to build the interface using static resources. We also used React for our frontend to create application faster, and Typescript as we enjoy having control over our objects, their type, and functionality.

Challenges we ran into

While working on the application, we encountered a few challenges that we had to overcome. One of them was to show the calendar on the project page only for service management projects. In the end, we resolved this using display conditions. Another challenge was to provide a more convenient version of date entry, that is, to use a calendar in which the user could mark selected dates. Finally, the last demand was to connect all parts of the project together.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are all proud of the achievements we have made in creating Absences Auto-Reply for JSM. But after all we are most pleased that we have finished it, and it works. :) Other things we would like to point out are that we managed to use custom UI in Forge, and to add a status change, as we believe it will make using the add-on more enjoyable.

What we learned

One of the important lessons during development we got is not to overcomplicate things, especially in terms of construction of the application. If possible, we should choose the simplest option to make application upgrade faster. It was also an opportunity to practice creating applications under the relentless pressure of the deadline. Moreover, we were able to once again test and confirm our teamwork skills and team alignment. :)

What's next for Absences Auto-Reply

In the near future, we plan to expand Absences Auto-Reply for JSM with additional functionality that will help the users enjoy the benefits of our application even more.

Our most prioritized idea is to implement import of absences via ICS files. We believe that this functionality would enhance the work with our add-on, by making it more convenient to add, for instance, national holidays. Moreover, we would also like to include a recurring system for continuous absences that are persistent every day, month, or a year.

Finally, less urgent ideas are to initiate the ability to create your own custom messages templates. Possibly with this feature we will provide ability to put multimedia elements to it. We also plan to implement multiple global calendars to split absences for example by its purpose to keep it more readable.

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