Helpdesk migration

Due to Atlassian dropping support for the products that we use as our helpdesk and tracking systems (the server versions of JIRA Service Management and JIRA) we are faced with having to migrate to JIRA Cloud.

This migration does however come with some changes, most of which are behind the scenes. In order to ascertain the impact of such a migration, an investigation was carried out by way of a Proof of Concept project. This POC has indicated that most things will work albeit at the cost of rewriting the automation that is used behind the scenes (this being because the internal process model is different between the two versions). The other things need to be rethought and some details still have to be finalized after which the migration process for the production system needs setting up.

Given that we have to migrate things (the current environment) and that things will then subsequently need to be altered (the automation, workflow definitions, groups etc.) we expect the helpdesk system to be off the air for around a week. This may seem like a long time but we are dependent on a number of external programs and processes over which we have no control and we are equally dependent on them working correctly. If they don't…

Once the migration is completed and the systems are publically available, we'll be keeping an eye on them to tidy-up any rough edges and also to handle the things that we must handle differently. This may lead to a few changes in how clients have to use the system but what these changes may be is unknown at the moment.

We hope to carry out this migration in August if all pre-requisites are satisfied (exact dates to be decided depending on availability of said previously mentioned other things). We will still be open for business via mail but any mails sent to us will not automatically create a JIRA SM ticket when the system is down.

We apologise for the inconvenience but the dropping of the products that we use has been presented to us as a fait accompli and if there's one thing we've learned over the last few years of JIRA usage it's that we (clients and Blaise group) can't do without it anymore!

There will be further updates on dates, availability and consequences when this information becomes known.