Customer Case allows you to use JIRA projects as a storage for keeping incoming feature requests or issue reports from your customers and users. Any JIRA project can be transformed into a forum. Two types of forums is supported:
Feedback - this forum type allows you to collect feedback in the form of ideas.
Support - this forum type allows your customers to submit their support requests and encountered issues.
Feedback Forum
Feedback forum displays the list of ideas submitted by users and customers on your customer feedback portal powered by Customer Case. Visitors on the portal can open the required feedback forum and vote for the interesting ideas, share their thoughts about options or start watching specific ideas.
Support Forum
Support forum allows your visitors to privately submit their tickets with issues and problems they encounter while using your products or services. Each user can see only tickets submitted by himself or herself and can not get access to tickets of other users. Support agents will get a listing of all tickets submitted by all users on the support forum so they can instantly proceed to troubleshooting these issues.
Viewing Forums
The best practice is to create a project from scratch and further use it for collecting ideas and feature requests from your customers. It is also preferable to avoid using the custom fields in the newly created project as they may not be treated properly if being required.
If you do not have access to JIRA administration console, you can open the list of registered forum through JIRA menu. See the Viewing Forums section.
Once you have installed the add-on, you can proceed to its configuration.
Navigate to JIRA Administration > Add-ons.
Locate the Customer Case section and select Customer Portal. An empty list or the list with available forums opens.
For each forum, you can find the following information:
Project - name of the JIRA project that will be used for storing ideas, feature requests or issues reports from customers.
Type - type of the forum (Feedback or Support).
Name - name of the forum.
Description - description of the forum.
Public URL - URL address for accessing the forum. It is comprised of the following elements:
sub-domain name is automatically assigned to each JIRA instance, which Customer Case add-on is installed on. By default, the company name from JIRA Cloud is used as sub-domain.
domain name - domain name of the Customer Case platform. Then you can change it to your your custom domain name.
forum alias - unique alias of the forum.
You need to place the public URL on your website to make it available to your customers. Then they can proceed to Customer Case and post their ideas, vote for the most demanding features or submit their issue reports.
Adding New Forums
Locate the Add Forum button and click it.
In the Create Forum form, specify the following information:
JIRA Project - select the appropriate JIRA project, which will be used for storing customers' ideas or issue reports.
Name - name of the forum.
Description - description of the forum.
Forum type - type of the forum (Feedback or Support).
Default issue type - select the default issue type in JIRA which requests submitted in Customer Case are converted to.
Custom JQL query - enter the JQL query that will show only requests that match specific criteria on the forum.
Click Save.
Note that JIRA projects containing some tasks will be exposed if you create a feedback forum. No tasks will be exposed if you create a support forum.
You can apply the custom JQL query to filter issues in the JIRA project that will be exposed on the forum.
By default, Customer Case pulls all issues from the selected JIRA project by using the JQL query (project = [projectId] AND). You can further append additional criteria to this query according to your needs. The specified JQL query is validated in the real time, so if the query is not valid you will see a corresponding warning.
Note that if you decide to change forum type from support to feedback forum, all the privately submitted tickets will be visible on this feedback forum.
Editing Forums
On the list with forums, locate the appropriate one.
Click the Edit link.
Make the required modifications.
Confirm the modifications.
Removing Forums
On the list with forums, locate the appropriate one.
Click the Remove link.
Confirm the removal of the selected forum.
Consider that all the submitted ideas and tickets will be preserved in your JIRA in the selected project, but the forum will not be available to your customers after removal.
Setting Access Restrictions for Forums
Customer Case allows you to create private forums for your internal use. Access to such forums can be restricted for particular email domains or users' emails. Additionally, you can select which authentication capabilities should be available for accessing each feedback forum.
On the list with feedback forums, locate the appropriate one.
Click the Restrictions link.
The Edit forum descriptions form opens.
Configuring Authentication Capabilities
In the Edit forum restrictions form, select the appropriate authentication methods that should be available on the feedback forum.
Click Apply when complete.
Setup of Private Forums
In the Edit forum restrictions form, switch to the Restrictions section.
In the General access options block, select the This is a private forum option. Once enabled, the forum will be no longer visible to users that have not logged in to the feedback forum.
You can allow users who are not logged in to Customer Case to submit requests on your private forum. Select the Allow request submission for users not logged in to Customer Case option. This option will override the defined access restrictions.
Click Apply.
Defining Access Restrictions for Email Domains
Customer Case allows you to restrict access to feedback forums for particular email domains. Only users with email addresses including the specified email domains will be able to log in to feedback forums.
Enter the appropriate email domain and click the Add button.
If you no longer need some email domain, click the Delete link next to this domain.
Click Apply.
Defining Access Restrictions for Users' Emails
Customer Case allows you to restrict access to feedback forums for particular users based on their email addresses. Only users with email addresses specified in the settings of the feedback forum will be able to log in.
Enter the appropriate email address and click the Add button.
If you no longer need some email address, click the Delete link next to this email.
Click Apply.
Customer Case will automatically send the invitation email to all the specified users' emails.
