Use and linking of Confluence and Jira Service Management (JSM) at the Johannes Kepler University (JKU) Linz

Approximately 30,000 people rely on a wide range of information at the JKU throughout the year: from scientific and administrative staff to students, external individuals and partners. This is a diverse target group, but they all have one thing in common: the need for efficiency, timeliness and immediate access to information. The stated goal was to meet this need. In addition, the aim was to increase customer satisfaction and the resources available to service desk employees through self-service. A further challenge was to reduce transmission errors in information processing caused by media discontinuities. Until now, information has been made available to customers via the JKU website and the intranet. An open-source wiki solution (TWiki) was used for internal IT documentation. Other software was also used: Micro- Focus Vibe, OTRS, OneNote, CheckVist and much more.

Confluence is an enterprise wiki software designed primarily for knowledge management and communication within a company or organization. The Atlassian software promotes collaborative work, such as joint editing of scientific articles, projects, and tasks. It offers import and export options to other formats (PDF, Word, HTML, etc.), user-friendly navigation, a powerful search function, and much more – and was exactly what the JKU needed. So in spring 2017, the IT department at the JKU began setting up a knowledge database.

Together with catworkx Vienna, a concept for migrating content from various systems (website, Vibe, Intrexx, and many more) was created for the JKU, along with a prototype. After clarifying which content should be migrated and how the content should be displayed in the new intranet, the implementation began. They decided on a structure based on topics: information management, research, teaching and studies, communication, human resources – to name just a few. In addition, catworkx provided support in handling Confluence (e.g. how labels, page property reports, templates, etc. work). Today, the content of the pages is maintained by administrative staff; the technical support of the areas is provided by the information management department.

“Help customers to help themselves” – this was the motto under which the development of the new service portal for processing customer enquiries in information management began in the course of 2018. The objectives: a single point of contact for customers, a reduction in the number of enquiries and an associated reduction in the workload of service management employees. The Jira Service Management project is linked to the knowledge base in Confluence and thus provides customers with results even before the request is created. “Before we introduced Jira Service Management, we worked with a ticketing system (OTRS). Requests came in at 46 different e-mail addresses. Before a request could be sent, the customer first had to research the right e-mail address for their request from a long list that could be found on the old website. This was prone to error, led to delays and in some cases meant that more time was needed to answer the queries,” says Monika Straif. Now, customers can either submit their queries directly via the service portal (Jira Service Management) or use the central email address. A service management employee responds directly or assigns the request internally to the appropriate team. In addition, predefined forms are provided to customers for frequent requests. “This makes things much easier – and makes employees happy,” says Monika Straif, adding: “We at JKU have had very good experiences with the link between the Jira Service Management Portal and the Knowledge Base – and efficient use pays off: The customer looks at the service portal, enters his search term and immediately receives suitable articles from the knowledge base. In the best case, his questions are already answered – if not, he can submit the request using a form.”

The efficient use of the system at JKU is rounded off by the use of numerous apps: For example, “Scroll Viewport for Confluence” is used to view the entire intranet, but also from the customer's perspective. “Scroll Translations” helps to manage and deliver Confluence content to a global audience. Today, for example, all content is also available to customers in English. “Table Filter and Charts for Confluence” is used by the JKU, for example, in the area of research. This is an efficient app for filtering any kind of data, for summarizing and visualizing it with dynamically updated diagrams. The Visibility App for Confluence makes it possible to display or hide parts of the content of a Confluence page according to various criteria (such as rights, group membership, page ownership, etc.). Consequently, JKU employees see different views and content depending on their permissions and login. “But even though the entire restructuring and the use of a wide variety of apps makes work easier for many people today – convincing all employees at the time that they should now work with the IT department was not easy,” notes Monika Straif.

Confluence and the Jira Service Management Portal are now an integral part of the university. “The use of Confluence offers employees the great advantage that several colleagues can work together and simultaneously on content. Within the platform, different requirements can be covered by setting up different spaces (e.g. intranet, documentation, internal areas for individual departments). Jira Service Management offers our more than 30,000 customers an IT service portal with a range of self-service options and a tightly integrated Confluence knowledge base. Overall, we have 30 percent fewer tickets – simply because many questions can already be answered from within the system,” summarizes Monika Straif.

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