Jira SM Node

On the top right-hand side click the + icon, which indicates the “Open nodes panel” wherein we can search for the nodes to be inserted to our workflow.

Under Jira node tree, select the “On issue created” node and set the parameters. Refer to the below image for the setting to be done.

Under parameters, in the “Credentials to Connect to Jira” section, select the “Create new credential” and specify the details as displayed in the next window that appears, i.e, email id, API token and domain in order to connect your node to your Jira account.

For the API token, login to your Jira account and navigate to Account settings > Security > API tokens and click on “Create and manage API tokens” which will take you to the below screen. Create your API token and paste it to the section as in the above image along with the domain information ,i.e, “https://sampathka.atlassian.net/” in our scenario. Finally, click on Save button and you are done with the setting to connect your Jira account to your node.

OpenAI Node

Since we are done with the setting for the above node, next we will click on the + icon at the top right and search for the next node. Under OpenAI node tree, select the “Message a model” node and set the parameters as shown in the image below.

For the credentials to connect to OpenAI we can make use of the free 100 credits available. Select the resource (input is text), operation and model (any simple LLM model is fine) as shown above. Now we are left with the prompt section which is where we specify the system prompt for smart decisions. Below you can find the file that contains the system prompt. Set the Role to User and enable the Simply Output and Output Content as JSON options and you are done with the settings for this node.

Slack Node

Next we will move on to the Slack node. On the top right, click on the + icon and search for “Send a message” node under Slack node tree.

On parameter setting screen of the above node, you need to connect to a Slack account using the “Create new credential” option under “Credential to connect with” section. In the next screen, click on the Connect my account button and your Slack node will be connected to your Slack account (Slack account 2 used in this example).

The other parameters of the node ,i.e, the Resource, Operation and Send Message To needs to be set as shown in the earlier node screenshot. In the next option, you need to select the Slack channel to which the message is to be sent (n8ntest is the channel in our example). After setting the message type as “Simple Text Message”, enter the format of the output under Message Text as follows and you are done with the setting for this node.

{{ $('Jira Trigger').item.json.issue.key }},
{{ $('Jira Trigger').item.json.issue.fields.status.name }},
{{ $('Jira Trigger').item.json.issue.fields.description }},

Classification:{{ $json.message.content.category }}

The above JSON under Message Text can also be set by dragging the output of Jira trigger node as shown below. The input and output sections will be visible once you execute the step/workflow.

Connect all the three nodes to each other as follows.

The workflow is not yet complete ,i.e, you need to have a trigger to start the workflow. For this, we will use the forms feature in JiraSM that will automatically generate a ticket once the form is submitted by a user. Inorder to create a form you can refer to my other blog here. The form user interface will appear as follows. The users can submit their service requests using the following form.

Executing the Workflow

Inorder to check the workflow, click on the “Execute workflow” button at the centre as shown in the three node connected workflow above. The workflow will not wait for the form to be submitted by a user. Submit the form by inputting all the sections as shown above and click on the Send button. This will generate a ticket (ITSAMPLE-125) on JiraSM that will appear as follows.

Now the workflow is triggered and all the three nodes will be executed one after the other. If there are no errors generated, the nodes will appear as follows after successful execution (green tick mark on each node).

Since our workflow is connected to a Slack channel, we will have to check the appropriate channel(n8ntest) for the output message. You can see the latest JiraSM ticket number, followed by the status of the ticket, description and the classification of the ticket into a category for the appropriate team to take necessary action.

Further Reading:

• Integrating Jira SM Alerts into Kanban Workflow
• Jira Service Management Forms: Enhancing User Experience
• Integrating Service and Software Workflows on a Single Kanban Board
• ITSM and System Management Tools : A Basic Guide
• Exploring LLMs and OCI Generative AI

Service Request with Approvals

The decision to use SR with approvals issue type depends on the complexity and risk associated with the service request. If external validation is needed to ensure accuracy, compliance, or proper execution, approvals should be implemented. If the request is straightforward and can be handled by the assigned agent, then an approval step may be unnecessary. The default “Service request with approvals” issue type will appear as follows.

Workflow Improvement

Since we will be calculating the SLA for the tickets using this workflow, to ensure proper calculation we will add a transition from “In progress” status to the “waiting for customer” status and vice versa in the workflow. In general, the Project admin role will not be able to edit the workflow, for this you will need to be a Jira admin. The changes are implemented in the next steps as follows:

Creation of Service Request Form

Now that we are ready with our issue/work type, the next step would be to create a form using the above issue type with the updated workflow. Let us create a simple native form without attachment.

The sections can be seen as shown in the below “Simple form” picture. Summary and Description are the inputs from the user, while the other sections are hidden from the user. Labels section would be needed to display the ticket on a kanban board, while the Approvers section need to be input with email id of the approving authority. Multiple people can be specified but anyone from the specified list can approve the request.

Approvers get an email once the user submits the form. The template of the notification mail can be seen as shown in the below picture. In the standard version and above of Jira, this template can be edited to include the description of the Jira ticket as well (appropriate variable needs to be included in the Content section). If you are using an external form as an attachment and want to reflect the description there onto the contents of the mail, don’t forget to select the link to jira section in the attached form edit option.

If you want to include a template for the description of the ticket, using automation would be one idea, but can be used for the tickets created manually by the agents. However, if you want to use a template for the user, an external form can be used with a preset input that is linked to the description field. Regarding approvals, it can be done by using the notification email as shown below or on the ticket by clicking on the Approve button.

SLA Rule Setup

Now that we are ready with the updated workflow and a form that is using the updated workflow, the next step would be to use the SLA feature on the tickets. The SLA rule can be set by navigating to the Project settings > SLA section. The Goals and Conditions need to be set appropriately.

Our final form will appear as follows. The user can access this form to enter the necessary information.

Further Reading :

• Jira Service Management Forms: Enhancing User Experience
• Streamline Your Workflow with Jira Kanban Boards
• Integrating Service and Software Workflows on a Single Kanban Board
• Integrating Jira SM Alerts into Kanban Workflow
• Understanding Data Center and Service Desk Operations

Currently, Opsgenie features are available natively in Jira Service Management. Thus, making it possible to access your operations work in the same place as the rest of your work is. Your Jira SM Teams page is the central hub for all operations work and configurations. You can add Jira SM members to responder teams here.

Using the Go to operations option you can configure settings w.r.t on-call schedules, integration, routing rules, and escalation policies at the team level. Hence, handling each alert differently based on its source and payload. You need to set up the integrations to get the alerts to come in. Jira SM integrates with various monitoring, logging, ticketing and chat tools.

Sync is a new feature that provides control over keeping alerts, issues, and requests synchronized. Here, you can control how and when Jira software issues and Jira SM service requests create alerts. Additionally, you can create workflows to define the conditions that trigger the generation of issues and requests in response to an alert.

Integration

You need to set up the integrations to get the alerts to come in. In our example, we will consider integrating with an application that can send emails which will trigger alert generation on Jira SM. Navigate to the concerned responder team (Test) below from Teams > Test.

Since we need to add a new integration, let us click on the option “Add integration” as shown in the above picture. This will take us to the following screen.

Select the application that you want to integrate to,i.e, Email application in our scenario. Clicking on Email icon above will take us to the following screen. Here, you can select a team under Assignee team section using the drop-down option. Since we have only the Test responder team now, we will select that and that specific team will receive alerts from this integration. Provide an appropriate integration name (TestX) as well.

Once the Continue button is pressed, the following screen will appear. Find the email address here that can be used for integration. Mailing to this email id will generate alerts on Jira SM.

The rules that you create for the integration as explained in the next section will work only if you turn on the integration. The status is turned ON in the above picture which indicates that the integration is ON. Jira SM creates an alert for each email sent to the specified email address as above. By default, email integration uses email subject as the alert message, and email body is put into the alert description field.

Since our final goal is to create a task on the Kanban board for the alert created, our next action would be to create a rule for the same under Syncs.

Syncs

Navigate to the Syncs section that is present just below the Integrations section. Click on the Create sync button at the top right to start creating rule(s) for the integration.

Select Create and update issues against alerts created by integrations or other syncs and select Add rule to set up a rule that creates an issue based on alert events caused by integration. Here, you can specify the conditions such that the status of the work event/issue created will reflect all the changes to the alert in Jira SM. This may include updating the comments in the work event and closing the work event based on the updation done to the alert(s).

However, the upper section, i.e., Rules for creating and processing alerts, can be used to create rules such that the alerts reflect the changes done to the Jira Software ticket. This may include updating the comments in the alert and closing the alert based on the updation done to the work event(s).

For the lower section ,i.e, the Rules for taking action against alerts section, the filter condition is set such that, if the Source section in the alert contains an entry of Email, then create a new Issue type of Task on Jira Software.

Under Default and mandatory fields customized, further settings can be done. The labels section is set to the source field in the alert which can be used for further filtering on Jira Software if needed.

Click on Save button and Turn on sync button to activate the rule.

Verification

Once you turn on the integrations and syncs, the next step would be test the whole setup. Send a mail to the email id specified earlier under integrations.

The subject of the mail is “Test mail alert” and the content of the mail is “test mail”. Alert(s) will appear under Teams>Alerts as follows. The summary/alert message as shown below is the subject of the mail as mentioned earlier.

The description of the alert contains the body of the mail as shown below.

We can also see that the Jira software issue is linked to the alert ticket. If you navigate to the software project that has only the kanban board, it will display all the issues created for that project. Moving the kanban board ticket to In Progress status will automatically change the alert ticket status from Open to acknowledged, and moving the ticket to Done on the kanban board will change the alert ticket status to Closed. This is possible, provided you have made the appropriate sync settings under Rules for creating and processing alerts.

Suppose we have one Kanban board and one Scrum board in the software project SWPRJ. We would need further filtering to display the appropriate task/story on either the Kanban or Scrum board. To display on the Kanban board, you need to filter the task/story under Configure board>General>Board filter>Edit filter query using the project name, labels etc. You can also make use of swimlanes to group different work items together.

Further Reference:

• Streamline Your Workflow with Jira Kanban Boards
• Integrating Service and Software Workflows on a Single Kanban Board
• Jira Service Management Forms: Enhancing User Experience
• Navigating Jira: From Basics to Advanced
• Essential Jira Automation Rules for Scrum Teams

It is common to have multiple boards in a Jira project. However, each board needs to have a specific purpose associated with it. This may include, Service requests, Incident management, development activities and so on. Let us consider that our software project in Jira will have one Kanban board to visualize the service requests and routine activities. While the other board ,i.e, the scrum board handles development activities. Here we are leveraging a single kanban board to visualize both the service requests and routine activities in different swimlanes.

We have the queues section in Jira SM that can be used to organize issues based on certain criteria. This helps the Operations team member to find and prioritize the work efficiently. However, there are some limitations like ranking and re-organizing issues in queues that can be overcome with the display on kanban. Also, Kanban provides much better visibility and navigation on a single board. Both Jira Software and Jira SM licenses are required to utilize the features mentioned in this blog post. First, we will focus on the automation process used to generate the issues. The latter part will be about linking them to the Kanban board.

Automation

In this section we will get to know, how to create issues for routine activities that will be displayed on the kanban board. The issues are created through the automation feature. Just create a sample automation ticket by navigating to Project setting>Automation. As displayed in the below picture create a sample rule and enable it. The point to note here is that we are adding the label section to the rule so that the tickets created will have the label as “ABC”. In the below example, the automation creates tickets every x minutes with the label “ABC,” where x is set to 5m.

When the automation rule executes, it creates sample ticket(s) under the issues section of the software project, as shown in the picture below.

Sometimes, it may be necessary to generate Jira tickets for certain alerts on an alerting tool (Example: Ospgenie). Convert these alerts into Jira tickets and move them to the Kanban board. Jira SM allows you to set rules under Teams > “Team name” > Go to Operations, where the integration and sync settings can be configured. The sync rule settings can be configured to create a ticket under a software project that will appear on the Kanban board.

Integration to Kanban Board

Now, we have the user service requests in the Service Project (Support) and automated tickets for routine activities in the Software Project (Scrum project). The next step is to link them to the Kanban board in the software project. On the top right of the kanban board, click on the three dots to select the “Configure board” option. This will take you to the settings section of the Kanban board as shown below.

The filter query,i.e, the JQL macro includes both the Scrum project and Support project, and filters the issues labeled “ABC”. You can toggle between the JQL and Basic options to switch between direct JQL entry and manual selection modes. The below picture depicts the manual selection of options.

Complete the option selection and save the filter. The Kanban board links both project types. As a result, it displays all issue type statuses from the projects as cards under the Columns subsection, as shown below. The next step is to customize the columns on the Kanban board. This ensures that the system reflects both software and service workflows, and you can arrange all the status cards accordingly. The workflow for Task and Service Request issue types will be as follows:

• Software Workflow for Scrum project Task Issue type: “Open” → “In Progress” → “Closed”
• Service Workflow for Support Service Request Issue type: “Waiting For Support” → “In Progress” → “Resolved”

You will be able to see all Scrum project Tasks & Stories labeled “ABC” on the Kanban board. Similarly, the Support Service Requests labeled “ABC” will appear on the board. Under the Swimlanes subsection of the settings, select “Projects” as the grouping method. This will display your Kanban board based on each project, as shown below:

Our board is ready, and we can use it to move the issue types through the various column statuses on the Kanban board.

Further Reading :

• Streamline Your Workflow with Jira Kanban Boards
• Jira Service Management Forms: Enhancing User Experience
• Essential Jira Automation Rules for Scrum Teams
• Navigating Jira : From Basics to Advanced
• Enterprise IT Infrastructure & Support

Scrum and kanban are both agile practices/frameworks. They have evolved over the years to address specific challenges around organizing work. In a kanban work cycle, the team takes another thing up as soon as one thing finishes. Kanban is better suited for continuous work, such as support and services. Here, the work is mostly a daily routine that is a one-time effort with no frequent stakeholder engagement. There is no provision to planning in Kanban, but the team can use their own approach on a need basis. One more point to note is that there are no roles like product owner, developer, scrum master in Kanban.

However, a more complex, iterative work, like a new product or feature development may be better done with scrum. Scrum has sprints within which work is executed in a PDCA cycle. Scrum has active stakeholder and customer involvement — at least once a sprint during a sprint review event. There are specific events for planning the whole sprint and each day in the sprint. Also, there are roles like Product owner, Developer and Scrum master in scrum.

Now that we have some basic understanding of a Kanban work cycle, let us visualize Kanban workflow on a Jira Kanban Board.

Creating a new Kanban board

Jira SM or a service project by default manages issues via queues within each project. However, the Jira boards(KANBAN/SCRUM) can be created and housed only in a software project or in your own profile. There is an option to combine multiple boards ,i.e, either more than one service project or a service project(s) and a software project(s). In our example, let us consider that a single service project ticket(s) is to be displayed on our sample kanban board. You can easily create a board on Jira in any of the following ways.

• From the sidebar, navigate to “Boards in scrum project” and click on the “Create board” option.
• From the top menu of “Your work”, select the “Boards” tab and click on “View all boards”. In the next screen click on the “Create board” button at the top right.

When you click on the Create board button, a pop up will appear that will provide the option to select either a Scrum or Kanban board. Since we are creating Kanban board, click on “Create a Kanban board”. In the following screen, you will see several options. You will select the second option, “Board from an existing project,” as you link the existing service project to the Kanban board.

On the next screen, as shown below, specify the board name, the project(s) to link to the board, and the location to save the board. Once all the details are provided, click the Create board button to create your new Kanban board.

Setting up the Kanban board

The service project to be linked was already specified in the earlier step. In case you need to link additional project(s) after creating the board, you can do so by navigating to Configure board > General > Board filter followed by clicking on “Edit filter query”. In the next screen as shown below you can include or exclude any project and add conditions to other sections of the issue type. Our service project has issue types like [System]Incident, [System]Service Request, [System]Service Request with approvals, Task & Sub task.

Once the service project is added, we need to mirror the board columns with the service project ticket status(s). For this, you need to first confirm the statuses that will be used in your selected issue type workflow. A workflow can be used by multiple issue types in a project. In our scenario, we have considered that one issue type uses all the statuses of the workflow and another one uses it partially. Of the many statuses available in the workflow, our service request issue type uses specific statuses. These include Waiting for support, In progress, and Resolved/Cancelled.

Accordingly, let us setup the board with the columns by navigating to ellipsis>Configure board>Columns. Here you can set the name of the columns appropriately and move the status setting cards to the appropriate column. The Kanban board now automatically aligns service project tickets in various statuses to their respective columns on the board. You can set the minimum and maximum number of cards allowed in a specific column on the board.

Navigating on Kanban board

Our final board after integration with the service project will look as follows.

In order to better understand the status of the three tickets on the board, you can refer to the earlier workflow. The board maps the TODO status to the Waiting for support status, IN PROGRESS to the In progress/Pending/Waiting for customer/Escalated status. Lastly, the DONE status is mapped to Resolved/Cancelled statuses in the workflow. Each issue type can be specified a workflow on Jira. For our request type ticket (Emailed request) SR0, “In Progress” is the subsequent status to the current “Waiting for support” status.

To prioritize or group tickets on the board, right-click on the ticket and select the appropriate option to flag it for prioritization or label it for grouping. Click on the “Label” drop-down option at the top of the board to filter the group of tickets by the label name.

Just drag and drop the tickets from one column to another and the status of the tickets will change automatically in the service project too.

Further Reading:

• Navigating Jira : From Basics to Advanced
• Essential Jira Automation Rules for Scrum Teams
• Jira Service Management Forms: Enhancing User Experience
• ITSM and System Management Tools : A Basic Guide
• JP1/ITDM2 : A Basic Guide

In your service project, agents can raise different request types, such as “Get IT help” or “Suggest improvement,” among others. These are visible on the customer portal and are the means through which customers interact with the service desk. They are user-friendly and enable your agents to assist customers more effectively by automatically sorting requests into the correct IT service management work category (Service requests, Incidents, Problems, Changes, or Post-incident reviews). Each request type is based on an issue type, and a single issue type can be the basis for many different request types.

Features

When Jira admins or project admins add a form as part of a request type, it’ll appear as one form for customers to fill out when they raise a request. Doing this lets you include conditional sections, rich formatting, and custom layouts to forms. Some of the beneficial features of forms that you can make use of is as follows.

• Enhance your requests by attaching forms to request types. You can create a native form that appears on the portal with the limited options available on request types. To enhance your requests with various options, use forms and attach them to request types. You can either create a form from scratch or make use of the existing templates.
• The dynamic forms feature helps to create forms that use conditional logic to dynamically show or hide fields, and add headings, tables, and rich formatting.
• Add external resources, utilize the slash (‘/’) command feature. On the service desk portal home page, you can specify the documents or reference links under the title Related resources. In some cases, you would like to specify links directly on the form that you are working on. In such cases, you can use the slash command, commonly found in Confluence, in the forms to display a similar menu. You can select the link option from the dropdown to add links directly to your form.
• Allow users to edit their tickets after submission with the agents help. Editing is possible as long as the option “Lock this form once it’s submitted so only admins can edit” is disabled. Then agents can reopen the ticket and navigate to the following section in the ticket,i.e. , Attached forms > Three dots > Open customer edits option. This will enable the customer edits.
• Allow the users to edit the tickets anytime on their own. To allow this, the “Keep this form open for edits” option should be enabled in the form settings. After submitting the ticket, the form will continue to be in the Open status and the customer will be able to edit it at any moment. When the customer finishes updating the form, they must save it for the changes to be reflected on the created ticket.
• Use the “Save a PDF version of this form each time it’s resubmitted” to keep track of any changes to the resubmitted form. This is helpful to review the modification history of an issue over time.
• Collect more information by attaching forms to issues. Internal and external links. You can add forms to existing issues (Example: Service requests, Incidents, Changes etc. ) and choose to make them either internal or external(Visible to customer). You can use them to request more information from customers or to complete internal processes as the issue progresses.
• Create issues using a link to a form. You can create issues using a link that goes directly to a form without needing to navigate to the portal. This allows your team to quickly create requests on your customers behalf, share the link with others, or embed into a Confluence page for quick reference.

Create a request type

Let’s create a request type and then attach a form that was created separately. To start using forms, from your service project select Project settings, then select Request types. To view the Project settings, you need to be either a project administrator or a Jira administrator.

While creating a new request type you need to specify the Name, Portal group and issue type. The description section is optional. In our scenario, since it is an incident we will choose the issue type as incident.

Once you click on the Add button, following is the screen that appears. Here you can edit the sections of the form that is visible to the user or customer. You can drag and drop any of the suggested fields on the right side to the left side. Since we will be needing the attachment field we will be dragging it to the left. The form that we will create later can be added here, which will enhance the features of this native form.

Create a form

To start creating a form, navigate to the Forms section under project setting and click on the Create form button drop-down option. Select the appropriate option to create a new form from either the blank one or from an existing template.

If we are creating a new form from a blank one, click Create blank to see the below form appear. The options available are indicated in red. The top left rich text format section, the top right Add section button, the Add field button are all marked in red. In the content of the form, enter slash to display a list of options available that can further enhance the form features.

Now that we’re familiar with some basic features for getting started with forms, let’s create a simple form. The final form should appear as follows.

Since we have already created the request type, we will create a form that will enhance the request type sections (till Summary) to appear as above . First step would be to create a blank form by click on the Create form > Create blank option. Let us name the form as “Cybersecurity incident details”. The “Name of the user” section can be created using the Long text option under Add field. Since the red star mark is there, it will be a mandatory section to be entered. Refer to the below screenshot on where and how to set the fields.

Similarly for next text box ,i.e., the “PC model number”, all the steps will be the same, expect for the selection under Add field. Here you will be selecting Short text instead of Long text option.

The next section is the Maker name which is a drop down option. For this, under the Add field select the Dropdown field. Enter the Display name and Choices as displayed in the below screenshot.

The following section will be the start of the dynamic form section wherein we will use the “Radio buttons” option under Add field to decide on which section to display in the latter end of the form. If Yes option is selected one form will be displayed and if No is selected another form will be displayed.

In order to start using the dynamic form, first click on the Add section button. Fill out the sections as shown in the below picture ,i.e, Name, Show section, When field, Is any of. As you can see from the below picture that the Show section, When field and Is any of: fields are drop down sections. Select the appropriate option inorder to map to the earlier radio button query and answer ,i.e, either Yes or No. The below screenshot depicts the section to be displayed when “Yes” option is selected.

The text box below is the “Provide the details of incident”, which needs to be added from the Add field section by selecting the Paragraph option.

Now that only the “No” option form remains, click the Add section button again to create the form that appears when the “No” radio button is selected.

The sections below are the Date & Time , Paragraph fields available under Add field section. Name these sections appropriately so that they display correct names as above when the “No” option is selected. .

Once all sections are complete, click the Save changes button at the bottom to save the form.

Attach form to request type

To attach the form created earlier to the request type created much earlier, navigate to the Settings tab to the top left of the screen. Here we can link our form to the request type. Please refer to the image below for details on the option that needs to be enabled. One more way to attach a form to the request type would be to navigate to the request type that we created earlier and use the Attach form button.

The next step would be to access the form from the portal. For this, you need to navigate to the Channels > Portal option as shown in the screenshot below.

Further Reading :

• Microsoft Forms : Getting Started Guide
• Useful Microsoft Outlook Tips & Tricks
• AppSheet : The No-code App Development Platform
• Data Visualization : MS Excel Dashboard Basics
• Data Visualization : Google Data Studio Dashboard Basics

Jira helps teams plan, assign, track, report, and manage work. It brings teams together for everything from agile software development to customer support. The combination of customizability, agile support, integration capabilities with other tools, issue tracking features, reporting tools, scalability, community support, and deployment options on cloud & on-prem has contributed to the popularity of Jira as a project management tool.

The different types of Jira versions include Jira Software, Jira Service Management, and Jira Core, each designed for different project needs. Jira Software supports software development, Jira Service Management caters to service and support teams, and Jira Core functions as a general project management tool.

Company/Team managed project

In Jira Software and Jira Service Management, you have the option to create projects as either team-managed or company-managed. Check the bottom left menu in your project to determine whether you’re in a team-managed or company-managed project.

• Anyone on the team can set up and maintain team-managed projects, making them ideal for autonomous teams that want to control their own working processes and practices within a self-contained space. Another benefit is that they are easier to configure, allowing teams to start quickly.
• Teams prefer company-managed projects for collaborating across multiple projects in a standardized manner, such as sharing a workflow. Company-managed projects involve more complex project configuration compared to team-managed projects, requiring Jira admins to configure screens and schemes.

Agile Project management

Agile project management, primarily used in software development, emphasizes flexibility and collaboration. It incorporates customer feedback throughout the project life cycle. The methodology takes an iterative approach to development, breaking down work into small, manageable cycles called “sprints” to focus on continuous improvement in the development of a product or service.

Jira software is an agile project management tool that supports any agile methodology, be it scrum, kanban, or your own unique flavor. From agile boards, backlogs, roadmaps, reports, to integrations and add-ons you can plan, track, and manage all your agile software development projects from a single tool.

Starting & Closing a sprint on Jira

Sprints only apply to Scrum boards and not to Kanban boards. The scope of the project and the capacity of your team determine the length of a sprint, which can vary from a week to a month. In order to complete a sprint, you must be a Jira Administrator or a user with the manage sprints permission. All subtasks and stories must be closed in the current sprint unless they are being carried forward to the next sprint.

Jira issue types are the basic units of work that must be completed. Depending on the volume of work, you can break an individual issue down into even smaller issues to make the larger piece of work more manageable. Typically, the hierarchical approach in Jira Software begins with epics, followed by tasks, stories, and bugs, and then by subtasks.

After completing sprint planning, enter the stories and subtasks for the upcoming sprint into the Jira backlog, along with their estimates. The epics can be linked to the stories at this stage or once there is clarity on the epics at a later stage.

Enter the minimum sections in the story as shown in the red-framed areas in the picture below.

Enter the story points section marked in the above picture if story points are the basis of your estimation. However, inputting the original estimate in days/hours/mins in addition to the story points, will double the total estimation for the story, so should not be entered. Input the original estimate for a subtask, since hours and minutes need to be logged.

Entering the description area for a story and subtask that explains the mission and goals to be achieved is a good practice. In other words, there will be clarity on the definition of done for a particular story/subtask.

At the end of the sprint, when you have prepared the backlog for the next sprint and have clarity on which subtasks/stories need to be closed or carried forward, you can close the current sprint and start the new sprint.

Tracking work on Jira

Jira provides essential time tracking capabilities. Users can track their worked time and log hours on tasks with the help of the Jira time tracking fields. The comments section should be entered to provide clarity on the tasks performed. Even the work log section has provision to input the description of work done along with time entry.

Jira thinks of time and story points in a certain way. Here’s the math it uses:

• A story point is equivalent to 8 hours.
• 1 week (or 1w) is the same as 5 days.
• 1 day (or 1d) is the same as 8 hours.

Jira time tracking helps to provide a clear understanding of the project progress, estimates, and deadlines.

Service Management

Jira Service Management (Jira SM) is Atlassian’s service management solution for all teams. It helps in

• Empowering every team to deliver great service fast,
• Brings visibility to work, and
• Accelerates the flow of work between development, IT, and business teams.

Jira Service Management provides default ITSM practices (such as standard workflows) so you can customize your service project to meet your company’s rules, regulations and requirements. Your new service project comes with a service catalogue, ITIL workflows and basic reports. You can also set up a knowledge base in Jira Service Management by adding Confluence to your site. Confluence, a web-based corporate wiki and an Atlassian product, easily links with Jira SM and Jira Software.

Jira SM encompasses service management practices like service request, incident, problem, change, knowledge, asset and configuration management. It features 8 standard issue types: Change, IT Help, Incident, New Feature, Problem, Service Request, Service Request with Approval, and Support. For service teams, standard issues represent and track different requests made by your teams and customers. You can find the service requests screen in the following picture.

After creating an issue, you can request additional information from your customer or team members. Attaching another form to the issue allows for more effective collection of this information. You can add any number of forms to issues by selecting “Add form” from the quick-add toolbar.

Forms

Forms in Jira Service Management are customizable interfaces you can use to collect data from users. That way you can make sure that service teams have all the details they need to resolve requests. We can categorize forms in Jira Service Management into two main types: static forms and dynamic forms.

Static forms are the most basic type of forms used in Jira Service Management. They consist of a predetermined set of fields that collect specific information from users. These fields don’t change based on user input; they remain constant regardless of how the form is filled out.

Dynamic forms, on the other hand, are more advanced and interactive. They can change in real-time based on the inputs or selections made by the user. This adaptability is made possible through conditional logic. Using it, we can show or hide fields, change field options, or even alter the form’s flow based on the user’s responses.

Automation

The automation activity allows you to focus on the work that matters, removing the need to perform manual, repetitive tasks by allowing your teams to automate their tasks, processes, and workflows.

Automation rules on Jira consist of three parts: triggers that initiate the rule, conditions that refine it, and actions that execute tasks on your site. Triggers, conditions, and actions form the building blocks of automation. Combine these components to create rules that auto-close old issues or notify specific teams when a release ships. The below picture shows the automation screen and an example scenario.

In the above scenario, an automation ticket creates a new task every 30 days under the issue section.

Filters

A filter is a saved issue search. Jira users can create and manage their own filters and filter subscription.

Quick filters lets you further filter the issues on your Scrum or Kanban board. Your board comes with two pre-configured quick filters for “Only My issues” and “Recently Updated”. You can create more quick filters using Jira Query Language (JQL) for which you must be a Jira admin, project admin or board admin.

In the above picture, you can find one manually created quick filters “ToDo”. The ToDo filter can be used to filter out the stories and subtasks in ToDo status.

This setting will appear under Active sprints section under quick filter. Refer to the below picture for more clarity ,i.e, two of the default filters, Recently Updated and Only My issues under quick filters. The other two filters are manually created ones.

Advanced search

The advanced search allows you to build structured queries using the Jira Query Language (JQL) to search for issues. JQL is not a database query language, even though it uses SQL-like syntax. You can specify criteria that you can’t define in the quick or basic searches. JQL can help gain key project insights and help you find not just issues but also important information of projects.

Add filter as favorite

Navigate to the Filters>View all issues section and enter the JQL to filter out your issues. In order to add this as favorite, just click on save filter option next to the JQL entry section.

This opens a pop up wherein you need to enter the name and description of the filter along with viewer and editor permission. Subsequently, clicking the save button will save this filter under starred filters. This appears under the default filters on the left side of the screen as shown in the above picture.

Reports & Dashboards

Jira has a range of reports that enable you to visualize trends about your project, versions, epics, sprints, and issues. It categorizes reports into four types:

• Agile reports
• DevOps reports
• Issue analysis reports
• Forecast and management report

Teams frequently use reports like burndown charts, velocity charts, sprint reports, and control charts to measure the sprint performance.

On Jira, the dashboard enjoys great visibility and has become the primary place in the system to view reports of Jira data and connected systems. You can add and arrange gadgets on a Jira dashboard. Also, you can share dashboard pages with a user, group, or the entire organization. This makes dashboards the perfect tool to create and share report pages dedicated to specific projects and types of reporting.

Further Reading :

• ITSM and System Management Tools : A Basic Guide
• JP1/ITDM2 : A Basic Guide
• ITIL 4 Foundation : Getting Started Guide
• Data Visualization : MS Excel Dashboard Basics
• Microsoft Forms : Getting Started Guide

Security Principles

In this first section of essential cybersecurity practices, i have briefed upon the topics of security concepts of information assurance, risk management process, security controls and governance elements.

Security Concepts

The basic security model that was mentioned in one of my earlier blogs too was the CIA triad, which stands for confidentiality, integrity, and availability. Confidentiality involves protecting data from unauthorized access. Integrity ensures that data has not been altered in an unauthorized manner. Lastly, availability ensures that data is accessible to authorized users when and where it is needed.

Threat Actors

In the realm of cybersecurity, threat actors encompass a range of entities. These may include insiders, external individuals seeking vulnerabilities, non-political cyber criminals, political entities like terrorists, and information gatherers, along with technological elements such as free-running bots that may be affiliated with any of the aforementioned groups.

Risk Management Process

In the context of risk management, steps involved in identifying, assessing and prioritizing risks as well as different ways to manage the risks are discussed.

Risk identification is the process of identifying potential risks to an organization’s operations, assets, individuals, or other organizations. This involves identifying and documenting the risks that could impact the organization and its information systems.

Risk assessment is the process of analyzing and evaluating the identified risks to determine their potential impact and likelihood. This involves assessing the risks based on their potential impact, likelihood, and other factors, such as the organization’s risk tolerance and the effectiveness of existing security controls.

Risk treatment is the process of selecting and implementing appropriate controls to manage the identified risks. This involves deciding whether to accept, avoid, reduce, or transfer the risks, and then implementing the appropriate controls to manage the risks. The goal of risk treatment is to reduce the overall risk to an acceptable level.

Security Controls

The various types of security controls include physical control or physical hardware devices, technical controls or logical controls, administrative controls or managerial control aimed at people within the organization.

Governance Elements

The various governance elements necessary for effective information security management are procedures, policies, standards and regulations.

Procedures are the detailed steps to complete a task that support departmental or organizational policies. Policies are put in place by organizational governance to provide guidance to all activities to ensure that the organization supports industry standards and regulations. Standards are often used by governance teams to provide a framework to introduce policies and procedures in support of regulations. Regulations are commonly issued in the form of laws, usually from the government and typically carry financial penalties for non-compliance.

Incident Response, Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery

In this section, the focus is mainly on the availability part of the CIA triad and the importance of maintaining availability for business operations. Maintaining business operations during or after an incident, event, breach, intrusion, exploit or zero day is accomplished through the
implementation of Incident Response (IR), Business Continuity (BC), and/or Disaster Recovery (DR) plan. This is one of the essential cybersecurity practices that plays a vital role in providing interruption free service.

Incident Response

Incident Response is a plan that responds to abnormal operating conditions to keep the business operating. It involves four main components: Preparation, Detection and Analysis, Containment, Eradication and Recovery, and Post-Incident Activity. Incident Response teams are typically a cross-functional group of individuals who represent the management, technical and functional areas of responsibility most directly impacted by a security incident. The team is responsible for determining the amount and scope of damage and whether any confidential information was compromised, implementing recovery procedures to restore security and recover from incident-related damage, and supervising implementation of future measures to improve security and prevent the recurrence of incident.

Business Continuity

Business Continuity is a plan that focuses on maintaining essential business functions during and after a disruption. It includes a list of the BCP team members, immediate response procedures and checklists, notification systems and call trees, guidance for management, contact numbers for critical members of the supply chain, and how/when to enact the plan.

Disaster Recovery

Disaster Recovery (DR) plan is concerned with restoring IT and communications back to full operations after a disruption. DR planning takes over from where business continuity efforts conclude. The goal of DR is to restore normal operations as quickly as possible after a disaster or other disruptive event. The DR plan includes an executive summary providing a high-level overview of the plan, department-specific plans, technical guides for IT personnel responsible for implementing and maintaining critical backup systems, full copies of the plan for critical disaster recovery team members, and checklists for certain individuals.

Access Control Concepts

Access control is the process of managing who has access to what information or resources in an organization. It involves three elements: subjects (who), objects (what), and rules (how and when). Access controls can be physical or logical. They are used to prevent unauthorized access, enforce the principle of least privilege, and protect the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of information.

Defense in depth is an information security strategy that involves implementing multiple layers of security controls to protect against a variety of threats. Privileged Access Management can help reduce risk by limiting administrative access to only when it is needed. User provisioning is the process of creating, modifying, disabling, or deleting user accounts in an organization’s information systems. Proper user provisioning is an important aspect of access control and can help ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of an organization’s information.

Physical access controls are security measures that are designed to prevent unauthorized access to physical locations, facilities, and equipment. These controls are an important aspect of access control and can help prevent theft, vandalism, and other physical security threats. Examples of physical access controls include fences, mantraps/turnstiles, motion detectors, swipe cards etc.

Logical access controls are security measures that are designed to prevent unauthorized access to information and computer systems. Typically, organizations implement these controls through software to restrict access to specific files, applications, or other resources based on user roles, permissions, or other criteria. Examples of logical access controls include discretionary access control (DAC), mandatory access control (MAC), and role-based access control (RBAC).

Network Security

Computer networking refers to the practice of connecting two or more computers together to share data, information, or resources. There are many types of networks, such as LAN, WAN, WLAN, VPN, etc., each with its own characteristics and requirements. Devices found on a network can include hubs, switches, routers, firewalls, servers, endpoints/end user devices and many more. Other important network terms include ports, protocols, ethernet, Wi-Fi, IP address, and MAC address. The OSI and TCP/IP models are two common models used to describe network architecture. When setting up and maintaining a network, it’s crucial to consider network security. You can use measures like firewalls, antivirus software, and access controls to safeguard against common threats, including spoofing, DoS/DDoS, viruses, worms, and Trojans.

Network Threats and Attacks

This refers to malicious activities that aim to disrupt or damage computer networks and the devices connected to them. Common types of network attacks include DoS/DDoS attacks, which overwhelm a network with traffic, and man-in-the-middle attacks, which intercept and modify network traffic. Other types of attacks include spoofing, in which an attacker impersonates a legitimate user or device, and phishing, in which an attacker tricks a user into revealing sensitive information. Viruses, worms, and Trojans, among other malware, can compromise network security. To protect against these threats, network administrators can use a variety of security measures, such as firewalls, Antivirus, Intrusion Prevention System and access controls. It is important to stay vigilant and up-to-date with the latest security practices to ensure the safety and integrity of computer networks.

Network Security Infrastructure

Network security infrastructure refers to the collection of hardware, software, and protocols used to protect computer networks from unauthorized access, attacks, and other security threats. It encompasses physical security measures such as power, HVAC, and fire suppression systems in data centres, as well as cloud security measures such as service models (SaaS, IaaS, PaaS) and deployment models (public, private, community, hybrid). Network design terminology, such as network segmentation, VLANs, VPNs, defense in depth, zero trust, and network access control, is also an important part of network security infrastructure. As mentioned in the earlier section, this infrastructure includes devices such as firewalls, intrusion detection and prevention systems, and access control systems, as well as security protocols such as SSL/TLS, IPsec, etc., By implementing a comprehensive network security infrastructure, organizations can help ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of their networks and the data they contain.

Security Operations

In this last topic on essential cybersecurity practices, i will be taking up the topics of data security, system hardening, security policies and security awareness training.

Data Security

Data security is the practice of safeguarding data from unauthorized access, use, disclosure, disruption, modification, or destruction. It involves implementing various security measures to ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of data. This involves categorizing and labeling sensitive data, setting retention periods, and ensuring its secure disposal when no longer required. Data security demands constant monitoring(Ingress & Egress), testing, and updates to address evolving threats and vulnerabilities.

System Hardening

System hardening reduces the attack surface by applying secure configurations to hardware, communication systems, and software, including operating systems, web servers, application servers, and applications. It involves implementing security controls and risk mitigation strategies to minimize the vulnerabilities and weaknesses of a system. The elements of configuration management, such as inventory, baselines, updates, and patches, make this possible. System hardening follows industry guidelines and benchmarks, like those from the Center for Internet Security (CIS). The goal of system hardening is to make a system more secure and less susceptible to cyber attacks.

Best Practice Security Policies

Best practice security policies ensure data and system confidentiality, integrity, and availability through guidelines and procedures. These policies include data handling, password protection, acceptable use, bring your own device (BYOD), privacy, and change management. Data handling policies ensure the appropriate use of data, while password policies establish guidelines for the appropriate use of passwords. Acceptable use policies define asset, device, and data usage, while BYOD policies set rules for personal device use. Privacy policies safeguard personal data, while change management policies oversee transitions from the present to the future state. These policies adhere to industry standards and best practices, requiring continual monitoring and updates to address evolving threats and vulnerabilities.

Securing Awareness Training

Security awareness training educates stakeholders about information security and safeguarding data and systems from cyber threats. Typically, three types of training are there, namely; education, training, and awareness. Education provides a basic understanding of security concepts and policies, while training focuses on specific skills and procedures. Awareness aims to keep security top of mind and encourage employees to report suspicious activity. You can tailor the training to the security topic(s), organization, position, and/or individual. Security awareness training aims to diminish internal threats by enhancing employee and other stakeholder security awareness. It’s vital in an organization’s security strategy, requiring continuous monitoring and updates for emerging threats and vulnerabilities.

I hope that you find this blog on essential cybersecurity practices useful.

Further Reference :

• Cybersecurity : A Quick reference guide
• IT Security Vulnerabilities and Exploitation
• Understanding Data Center and Service Desk Operations
• Enterprise IT Infrastructure & Support
• Introduction to Virtualization and Cloud computing

Here i will be focusing on a few of the asset management topics ,i.e, making use of JP1’s functions to better manage the IT assets and security management topics ,i.e, using JP1’s data collection and protective security measures to manage the health of PC. Below you can find the asset management features followed by security management features of JP1.

• Manage all the IT assets in one place
• Manage software licenses
• Manage contract information
• Optimize your inventory processes
• Control devices remotely
• Distribute and install software
• Install and manage Windows feature updates
• Manage smart devices

• Ensure compliance with security measures
• Keep a log of operations
• Restrict the use of USB memory devices
• Control network connections
• Implement thorough virus protections
• Install and manage Windows quality updates

Installation

In order to get started with JP1, the first step would be to install the JP1/IT Desktop Manager 2 – Manager on the server that will be called the management server. Once the installation is complete, the next step would be to install the Remote Installation Manager on the administrator’s PC. Remote installation manager is used to distribute files. On the administrator PC, register the product license from the login window using the License button. After the product license is correctly registered, the URL in the below format can be used to login to the JP1/IT Desktop Management 2 operation window.

http://management-server’s-IP-address-or-host-name:31080/jp1itdm/jp1itdm.jsp

Before you start managing the users PC, make sure that JP1/IT Desktop Management 2 – Agent is installed on each of those computers. Computers on which JP1/IT Desktop Management 2 – Agent is installed can be managed safely. Remember to install JP1/ITDM 2 – Agent and the Packager on the administrator’s PC. Agent installation is needed as administrator’s PC is also subject to management. The Packager is used to distribute files remotely.

JP1 Operation Window

Enter the user name and password on the login screen to login to the JP1 operation window. If it is a first time login, password change prompt will show up, else JP1 home screen will be displayed. Here you can find the options as shown in the figure below.

On the Home screen dashboard you can see important notifications and a summary of any changes made to the system as compared to the previous day w.r.t hardware, software and security. On the Security tab, new policies can be applied for device usage, operation log of a particular device can be obtained. On the Assets tab, new device registration and searching of JP1 registered/installed assets like PC, printers, IP phones etc can be performed. On the Inventory tab, JP1 installed PCs/Servers will show up. One can check the online/offline status and other information about the PC here, the administrator can also remotely access the online user PC from here. The Distribution(ITDM) tab can be used to manage software packages on user PC.

Under the Events tab, all the events w.r.t device usage on a PC, program updation or security judgement while JP1 is running will be displayed as an event here with user & device information. Under the Reports tab, you can extract information based on your purpose. The reports that can be generated are; summary report, security diagnosis report, security details report, inventory details report and asset details report. Finally, the Settings tab can be used to scan the network for any new PC/device connection. Devices with or without JP1 installed can be detected here. Also multiple devices with the same IP address can be detected.

Features

In this section i will brief on a few of the features that belong to either the asset management or the security management category.

Manage all the IT assets in one place

With JP1, you can automatically collect information about hardware devices and software programs over the network. In addition to on-premise devices connected to the network, you can also manage notebook computers that are occasionally connected to the network, as well as notebook computers, thin clients, and smart devices that are taken off-premises for remote work. Even contract-related information (such as the contract type and period) can be registered and managed in association with the relevant IT assets.

Manage software licenses

JP1 can automatically identify what software is installed on managed PCs and then incorporate this information to show you the number of licenses you own, the number of licenses in use, and the number of licenses still available. You can check this data to make sure you are not using any software programs in excess of the licenses that you have purchased. JP1 also allows you to identify the PCs on which a program has been installed but to which no license has been allocated. This can be checked under, Assets > Managed Software > Managed Software List.

Optimize inventory process

JP1 can be used to collect information about the type of devices being used at your company, including PCs and servers. You can keep data about your IT assets up to date simply by registering new devices and maintaining information about persons managing existing devices. You can also output this information to a list that can be used when checking for actual devices, making inventory processes more efficient. Under Reports, Inventory details report and asset details report can be generated for this purpose.

Control devices remotely

When a problem occurs on a PC at a remote site, you can solve the problem remotely from the convenience of your own desk. Remote connectivity allows you to send and receive required data to and from PCs. You can even record a video of your remote operations to use later when explaining the process to other users. User PC can be accessed from the Inventory option as shown in the below picture. Select the online user PC from the device list and the Remote Control button will become active. Click the button to access the user PC remotely.

Distribute and Install Software

You can use JP1 to automatically distribute and install software on your company’s remote PCs and servers. JP1 provides a wide array of functions that allow you to distribute software to only a specific subset of PCs (for example, PCs belonging to a particular department) and to specify the date and time when software is to be distributed and installed. With these and many other detailed settings, JP1 allows you to customize your software distribution operations.

In order to distribute software to a single PC remotely, select the option Distribution(ITDM) > Task and click on Add package distribution task sub menu. From the list select the relevant package to be installed. The task name and PC details need to be entered to start the task. Once the task is complete, cross check the installation under Inventory, Device List > Installed Software information or Revision History > Revision History List of the device.

Manage smart devices

JP1 allows you to collect information from smart devices (such as smartphones and tablets) and manage them together with other devices such as computers and servers. You can even remotely control smart devices by, for example, installing applications, locking or initializing lost devices, and resetting forgotten passcodes. The method of granting access to a smart phone to connect to the company network is mentioned in the Assigning Policy section below.

Ensure compliance with security measures

With JP1/IT Desktop Management 2, you can collect information from managed PCs, such as information about security vulnerabilities, prohibited operations and information leakage. JP1 helps you form a clear picture as to whether the security risks facing each of your PCs are being effectively mitigated. Navigate to Security > Dashboard to access the below window.

You can use Security > Security Policies to create and assign policies to groups to judge the security status. Security > Computer Security Status to assign security policies to individual PCs and Security > Windows Update to manage windows security updates.

Expanding more on security policies ,i.e., the policies can be applied not only to groups but also to individual PCs. The point to note here is, a different policy applied to an individual PC overrides the group policy. In case of USB memory device registration, a new policy can be created and set such that its usage can be restricted only to a particular department PCs. Even each PC of the department can be assigned different device usage policy.

Just click on the Add button in the above figure, that will open the below window where the necessary usage policy for the USB device can be created.

I will discuss more on assigning policies to USB memory devices later on.

Keep a log of operations

Operations that allow someone to obtain internal company information, potentially disclosing such information to parties outside the company, pose a risk of information leakage. JP1 identifies these types of operations as “suspicious operations” and notifies administrators, who can then trace the operations by examining the operations logs. One can access the logs by navigating to Security > Operations Log List. The point to note here is that, only the operation logs collected on the management server can be viewed.

Restrict the use of USB memory devices

With JP1, you can permit the use of only USB memory devices owned by the company, prohibiting the use of all other USB memory devices. In other words, if someone inserts an unauthorized USB memory device, use of the device will be disabled. This feature limits the ability of USB memory devices to act as a pathway for information to leak outside the company. JP1 also allows you to check a list of the files stored on each USB memory device that you are managing.

Now let us consider an example wherein a new USB memory device is connected to a PC. The first step would be to navigate to Events tab and click on the edit filter condition (section A) button to enter the Event Number, PC name. The event number 1011 displays security information wrt any new device connection. Once the OK button is clicked, the filter result will display the event list wrt to the PC name and event number entered earlier.

The section B in the above picture displays the event details wrt to any event in the event list. This can be opened just by clicking on the relevant event message in the filter result section. The information needed for device registration ,i.e., the device name and device instance id is to be noted down from the event message “操作の抑止対象のデバイスを切断しました” or Device usage blocked message .

Encrypted device registration/Model registration : The USB memory is of encrypted(Eg: 256bit AES) and non-encrypted type. The registration method varies for each. First, we will look into the registration of encrypted devices. Based on the information obtained from the event log earlier, the inventory name is to be entered as shown in the below figure.

More information needs to be entered after scrolling down on the Add hardware Assets window. The necessary information is marked in red as shown in the below picture after which the submit button is clicked.

Non-encrypted device registration/Serial registration: In case of non-encrypted device, the device registration is done as shown in the figure below. First the Inventory name is entered as per the format marked in red.

Scrolling down further in the same window, a few more details need to be added. The required information like Inventory type, Model, Maker, Serial number and Device Instance ID is entered in the format as shown below. Once complete, click on the submit button to register the memory device.

Quick registration or Multiple device registration: In case you want to quickly register a USB device or you have more than one device to register, JP1 provides a solution in the form of agent for online management. This function can be accessed by navigating to Windows Start menu > All Programs > JP1_IT Desktop Management – Agent > Administrator Tool > Register USB Device. If password protection is set, the default password would be manager.

Once logged in with the password, the above left window appears. The black frame and red frame shows the status when USB device is not connected and connected respectively. Once the device is detected and selected, click on the register button. Now the above right window appears, wherein the OK button needs to be clicked to register the device. Finally, login to JP1/ITDM2 and navigate to Assets module as shown below.

On JP1, the initial status will be in Unconfirmed state. Change the Asset Status of the registered USB device to something other than Disposed. Usually the status will be changed to Operating state using the Change Status button.

Assigning Policy : Once the device is registered in any of the above methods, it may not yet be ready to use. Each of the USB device either external or internal to the PC, can be assigned an appropriate policy as follows.

As shown in the above figure, navigate to the Security module > Device List > Action. Click on the Action drop down button, and select the Assign Policy option to open the below window. Select the appropriate policy from the Policy to be set/assigned drop down option.

Below is a list of commonly used devices that may or may not require assigning a policy before usage ;

• Internal CD Drive : Select the appropriate policy that allows USB device and CD usage. In addition CD driver installation may be required.
• External CD/BD Drive : Just the USB device registration is fine.
• Internal SD Card Reader : Select the appropriate policy that allows USB device and SD card usage.
• External SD Card Reader : Just the USB device registration is fine.
• External USB Scanner/Webcam : Select the appropriate policy that says IMG OK.
• IC Recorder : In the event list, both the USB device and portable device blockage message appears. Just the registration of USB device is fine.
• Encrypted USB memory : Just the registration of the USB device is fine, but sometimes a virtual CD drive appears. In such a case, appropriate policy wrt USB device and CD usage needs to be set.
• Non-encrypted USB memory : Just the USB device registration is fine.
• HDD USB memory : Just the registration of the USB device is fine, but sometimes a virtual CD drive appears. In such a case, appropriate policy wrt USB device and CD usage needs to be set.
• SSD USB memory : Just the USB device registration is fine.
• USB Vaccine : This device will get detected as a virtual CD drive and USB device. Just the registration of the USB device information is fine.
• Iphone/Android Smartphone/Digital Camera : Select the appropriate policy that says WPD OK.

Control network connections

You can use JP1 to prevent PCs that you are not managing from connecting to the network, ensuring that privately owned PCs cannot access the company network even by accident. For company owned PCs, you can easily grant access to verified PCs to connect to the network while you can also block PCs that are no more used.

As shown above, navigate to Settings > Network Control List Settings. Search for the PC using the host name/IP address. From the search results, select the PC and click on Edit > Connect to network to select the Allow radio button. This will allow the connection of the above PC to the network. Similarly, just change the Connect to network option to Do not allow to block a PC from connecting to the network. You can also grant/block access of a PC to connect to a network under, Inventory > Device Inventory > Network List.

Implement thorough virus protections

As JP1 allows you to verify that all required security measures have been implemented, if an unsafe PC is found, you can send a message to the user of that PC to apply the necessary security measures. Navigate to Security > Computer Security Status > Device List to verify the security status of any PC and also to send message to the user if required. Furthermore, if there are PCs that are at risk because their antivirus software is not up to date, you can distribute and install the latest version of that software on these PCs.

References :

https://www.hitachi.com/products/it/software/prod/jp1/product/jp1/
http://itdoc.hitachi.co.jp/manuals/3021/3021336700e/DMKG0009.HTM
http://itdoc.hitachi.co.jp/manuals/3021/3021327600/DMUY0274.HTM
http://itdoc.hitachi.co.jp/manuals/3021/30213E1220e/DMDS0014.HTM
https://www.ashisuto.co.jp/jp1blog/article/1212448_4996.html

Further Reading :

• ITSM and System Management Tools : A Basic Guide
• Enterprise IT Infrastructure & Support
• Understanding Data Center and Service Desk Operations
• IT Security Vulnerabilities and Exploitation
• Cybersecurity : A Quick reference guide

Introduction

As you might be knowing, ITIL is a framework for service management. ITIL is the most widely used ITSM framework in the entire world. Most large companies have built their IT service management systems and processes around the ideas and concepts of ITIL framework. Currently we are in the 4th Industrial revolution, where fusion of technologies has blurred the lines between physical and digital realms. Technologies such as Cloud computing, IoT, Machine Learning, Blockchain, Self driving cars etc. have transformed our world economies and our lives.

ITIL 4 is not considered as ITIL version 4, instead it means ITIL for the 4th Industrial revolution. ITIL 4 Foundation will introduce readers to the management of the modern IT-enabled services, provide them with an understanding of the common language and key concepts and show them how they can improve their work and the work of their organization with ITIL 4 guidance.

Service Management

Service management is defined as a set of specialized organizational
capabilities for enabling value to customers in the form of services. More and more organizations recognize that value is co-created through an active
collaboration between providers and consumers, as well as other organizations that are part of the relevant service relationships. Those organizations that deliver services are referred to as service providers. Those to whom services are delivered are referred to as service consumers. By the way, an organization is a person or a group of people that has its own functions with responsibilities, authorities and relationships to achieve its objectives.

Service Consumer Roles can be classified as customer, user and sponsor. A customer is one who defines requirements for services and takes responsibility for outcomes from service consumption. A person who uses the services is a user. While a person who authorizes the budget for service consumption is a sponsor. By the way, a service is a means of enabling value co-creation by facilitating outcomes that customers want to achieve, without the customer having to manage specific costs and risks. The term outcome refers to a result for a stakeholder enabled by one or more outputs.

Service Relationship

In order to create value, service providers have to provide more than just the service. Service Relationship is a co-operation between a service provider and service consumer that includes service provision, service consumption and service relationship management. The term service provision refers to the activities performed by an organization to provide the services. Service consumption points to the activities performed by the organization/or a person to consume the services. Finally the term, service relationship management refers to the activities that the service provider and service consumer perform together to enable value co-creation to occur based upon the service offerings.

In this section we will look into the different relationships involved in providing any single service. For example, a facility organization can rent office space to an IT organization. IT organization can also provide IT services to the facility organization in addition to its other customer organizations. The customer organization inturn provides services to its users. Interactions between organizations are more likely a network or ecosystem rather than the simple sequence of interaction between organizations as shown below.

The above service relationship model depicts the sequence of service relationships between the various organizations involved in our example.

Costs and Risks

Costs refer to the amount of money spent on a specific activity or a resource. Costs can also be expressed in non-financial terms like man-hours or Full time equivalent (FTE). A service provider aims to reduce or remove costs for you when providing a service. For example, when a person who rarely makes a call or uses internet purchases a mobile connection service, a package that involves minimum charges on calls and internet connection would provide more value.

Risk is a possible event that could cause harm, loss or make it more difficult to achieve objectives. A service provider’s goal should be to reduce risk for the consumer. Risk is potentially imposed on consumers by the service. Consumers should contribute to reducing the risk by taking some mitigating actions like communicating the needs and constraints to the service provider. Even here value can be co-created or risks can be reduced by mutual co-operation. However, risks can either be avoided, accepted, transferred or mitigated and cannot be eliminated completely.

Utility and Warranty

Utility is the functionality offered by a product or service to meet a particular need. In short, it means “Fit for Purpose”. While, warranty is the assurance that a product or service will meet agreed requirements. In short, it means “Fit for Use”. A service should have both utility and warranty in order to be successful. Warranty addresses areas such a availability, capacity, security levels and continuity w.r.t to a service infrastructure.

Four Dimensions of Service Management

As shown in the below picture, the value at the center is co-created through the various products and services. When a service provider creates a product or service to a customer, the service provider will look at it in 4 perspectives or dimensions. The perspectives are Organizations & people, Information & technology, Partners & suppliers and Value streams & processes. The external factors ,i.e, PESTLE in clockwise order starting with Political factors need to be considered when building your services as they might have an impact.

The first dimension of Organizations & people focuses on how are we going to setup the organization, how is it going to function, what kind of culture it is going to have, how do we take care of the people so that people can deliver the products and services to create value to the customer.

The second dimension of Information & technology stresses on points like, is it compatible with the current architecture, does it raise any regulatory, compliance or information security control issues, will it continue to be viable in the foreseeable future, does it align with the service provider / service consumer strategy, does the organization have the right skills to support and maintain the technology ,i.e, with or without automation, does it have additional capabilities that can be leveraged for other products and services, does it introduce new risks and constraints to the organization, risk tolerance.

Partners & suppliers do not fit under the dimension one, the reason being Organization & people is internally focused to the organization, while partners & suppliers is externally focused. Partners are more closely tied to the organization business while suppliers are more commodity based. Every organization relies on other partners & suppliers and is based on goals, culture and business environment of the organization.

Value streams & processes defines the activities, workflows, controls and procedures needed to achieve the agreed upon objectives. The definition of Value stream is, a series of steps an organization undertakes to create and deliver products and services to service consumers. This combines all of the organization’s value chain activities. Process is a set of interrelated or interacting activities that transforms inputs into outputs. A well defined process can improve productivity, be optimized and will be automated. This dimension is more concerned about delivering a product or service to a consumer by executing certain processes that is part of a value stream.

Service Value System

Service Value System (SVS) describes how all the components of the organization work together as a system to enable value co-creation. The purpose is to ensure that the organization continually co-creates value with all stakeholders through the use and management of products and services. As shown in the below picture, the SVS consists of three parts namely the opportunity/demand as input, value as output, the central part with the Service value chain-Governance-Practices-Guiding principles-Continual improvement. In simple words, the idea of service value system is to take something in, add value, and put it out on the other side

Opportunity, demand and Value

Opportunities represent options or possibilities to add value for stakeholders or otherwise improve the organization. For example: create a new product or service and bring them to market to add value. The other input ,i.e, the demand is the need or desire for products and services among internal and external consumers. The output ,i.e, the Value is the outcome of the service value system that enables creation of many different types of value for a wide group of stakeholders.

Governance

Governance is the means by which an organization is directed and controlled. ITIL being a best practice provides a framework for governance. For example, you may come up with activities, process and procedures to handle something like change management within your organization. You will build the activities and procedures around the governance so that they are inline with the governance that is part of the high level of your organization.

Guiding principles

Guiding principle is a recommendation that guides an organization in all circumstances. Though the approach to service management may differ with organizations, the guiding principles should be the same. Guiding principles encourage and support organizations in continual improvement across all levels of the organization. Of the seven guiding principles, consider which of the guiding principles are relevant to your situation. The seven guiding principles are as follows;

• Focus on Value

Everything the organization does should link back, directly or indirectly, to value for itself, its customers and other stakeholders.

• Start Where You Are

Don’t start over without first considering what is already available to be leveraged. By figuring out the existing steps, you will get to know what useful steps to be taken forward and non-useful steps to be left out. All of this is done by measuring what you have. Measurement should be used to support the analysis of what has been observed rather than to replace it.

• Progress Iteratively with Feedback

Working in a time boxed and iterative manner with embedded feedback loops allows for greater flexibility, faster responses to needs, the ability to respond to failure earlier, and an overall improvement in quality.

• Collaborate and Promote Visibility

Collaboration is about working together and promotes visibility. Collaborate and promote visibility is about, making sure the information is getting up to the right people, at the right level, to make the right decisions.

• Think and Work Holistically

A holistic approach to service management requires an understanding of how all the parts of an organization work together in an integrated way. Collaboration is one of the key points here. Automation can help you to work more holistically. Automation of Service desk can be provided as an example.

• Keep it Simple and Practical

Outcome based thinking should be used to produce practical solutions which deliver valuable outcomes using the minimum number of steps. Having a holistic view of the organization’s work and starting with an uncomplicated approach are important. By keeping it simple, it makes things easier to understand, more likely to be adopted, and is the best route to achieve the quick wins.

• Optimize and Automate

Optimization is to make something as effective and useful as it makes sense to do. While, automation is using technology to perform a step or series of steps correctly and consistently with limited or no human intervention. The point here is to simplify and optimize before automating. Make use of the other guiding principles when applying this one.

Service Value Chain

The central part of the service value system is the service value chain that consists of Plan, Improve, Engage, Design and transition, Obtain/build, deliver and support activities as depicted in the below picture. The below picture does not depict a linear sequence of events. However, in ITIL v3 we had the service life cycle that had a linear sequence of actions starting with the service strategy, service design, service transition, service operation and continual service improvement. In ITIL 4, we normally start with engage but we always don’t have to. Based on this, we will touch upon other activities within the service value chain that can interact with each other in any order.

• Plan

Ensures a shared understanding of the vision, current status, and improvement direction for all four dimensions of ITSM and all products and services across the organization. Inputs to the plan process can be from the organization’s governance body, engage process, improve process, design & transition and obtain/build. All the information is used to plan the updated service roadmap. Outputs can either go to the engage, improve or design & transition process.

• Improve

Ensures continual improvement of products, services, and practices across all value chain activities and the four dimensions of service management. Inputs to the improve activity can be from the deliver & support process, engage process and all other value chain activities. Outputs can be directed towards all value chain activities.

• Engage

The purpose is to provide good understanding of internal / external stakeholder needs, continual engagement, transparency and maintain good relationships with all stakeholders. Inputs to the engage activity can be from the plan, deliver and support process, customers, partners & suppliers and all other value chain activities. The outputs from engage can go to the customer, any of the value chain activities.

• Design & Transition

The purpose is to ensure that products and services continually meet stakeholder expectations for quality, costs, and time to market.
There are a lot of inputs from the plan, engage, improve and the other value chain activities. The output from the activity will be fed to obtain/build, engage, deliver & support and to all the other value chain activities.

• Obtain/Build

This activity ensures that service components are available when and where they are needed, and that they meet agreed upon specifications. There are a lot of inputs from the plan, engage, external & internal partner & suppliers, all other value chain activities. The output goes to design & transition and/or delivery & support, other value chain activities.

• Deliver and Support

This activity ensures that services are delivered and supported according to agreed specifications and stakeholder expectations. People in IT support are part of the deliver and support. The inputs to this process can be from the design & transition, engage, obtain/build, improve. The outputs are the services delivered to customers and users. Other outputs are fed to engage, improve, design & transition and obtain/build.

Continual Improvement

As depicted in the lowest part of the SVS picture above , continual improvement is a part of the 34 ITIL practices that comes under the practices activity which is just above the continual improvement activity in the picture. Since continual improvement is that important, it has been separately mentioned. The purpose of continual improvement practice is to align the organization’s practices and services with changing business needs through the ongoing identification and improvement of services, service components, practices, or any element involved in the efficient and effective management of products and services.

Continual Improvement Model is a seven step methodology that provides a framework for improvement operations with organizations.

As shown in the above picture, the model starts with the step1 “What is the vision?”, the subsequent steps follow and the final step ,i.e, step7 would be “How do we keep the momentum going?”. However we restart it once again with the step1 as continual improvement is an ongoing process that never stops. This may continue until we have the best product or service possible.

• What is the vision?

The vision for the organization is going to come from the top leadership. By understanding the vision, we can drill it down to our specific case and get to know the status of all the improvements, who is going to help whom and how it is going to affect the organization as a whole.

• Where are we now?

The success of an improvement initiative depends upon the starting point and the impact of the initiative. It is difficult to track and measure effectiveness of any improvement initiative if you never determined where you started from. So it is important to create an objective baseline or a starting point metric.

• Where do we want to be?

From the baseline we got to know the current status, so we need to know our next step. Gap analysis looks at our overall vision, where we currently are, and where we want to be over some amount of time. Based on this analysis using KPI and Critical Success Factor(CSF) metrics, we will get to know what the gap/delta is. Set the goals based on this.

• How do we get there?

In this step we are going to create an improvement plan. The plan may be simple and direct or a complex one. Break the complex plan into manageable chunks and check progress after each iteration.

• Take Action

Here we put the plans into motion. The waterfall or agile method can be used to execute your plans and depends on the situation on which you want to use. Measuring the progress, managing the risk, ensuring visibility are important.

• Did we get there?

In this step we check the progress that can be either positive or negative. Our current state, i.e, “where are we today?” is compared against the original baseline of step2. Based on the new baseline we need to determine the next steps.

• How do we keep the momentum going?

If we meet the goal we need not stop there, as we need to keep improving. In case we did not meet the goals, we need to get back, readjust and figure out on how to meet the goals. If we meet the goals, it is important to attempt to continue the improvement gains across the organization.

Practices

As mentioned in the earlier section there are 34 ITIL practices. Since the section is huge, i will be explaining the details under a separate heading. Practice is a set of organized resources, designed for performing work or accomplishing an objective. Each practice supports multiple value chain activities. The 34 practices are divided into three categories as follows.

General Management Practices

There are 14 general management practices. These general management principles/practices have been adopted/adapted for service management for more general business management domains.

• Continual Improvement

When working on continual improvement, the methods/models/techniques like Lean, Multi-phase projects, Balanced scorecard, Agile, Maturing assessments, Devops, SWOT analysis will be helpful. One more helpful tool, Continual Improvement Register (CIR) is a database of structured document to track and manage improvement ideas from identification through to final action. All value chain activities are subject to continual improvement as we are always trying to improve our activities and processes. Refer to the earlier section for more information on the topic.

• Information Security Management

This is to protect the information needed by the organization to conduct its business. The primary focus is on the balanced protection of Confidentiality, Integrity, Availability, Authentication, Non-repudiation of data.

• Relationship Management

The purpose is to establish and nurture the links between the organization and its stakeholders at strategic and tactical levels. This is done by identifying, analyzing, monitoring and doing continual improvement of those relationships between various stakeholders.

• Supplier Management

The purpose of supplier management is to ensure that the organization’s suppliers and their performance are managed appropriately to support the provision of seamless and quality products, services and components.

NOTE : The following practices are mentioned for awareness only and will not be part of the test.

• Architecture Management – Provides an understanding of all the different elements that make up an organization and how those elements interrelate, enabling the organization to effectively achieve its current and future objectives.
• Knowledge Management – Provides an understanding of all the different elements/data that make up an organization and how those elements interrelate to generate wisdom needed to make decisions.
• Measurement and Reporting – This practice supports good decision making and continual improvement by decreasing levels of uncertainty. Example : Baseline.
• Organization Change Management – Ensures that changes in an organization are smoothly and successfully implemented and that lasting benefits are achieved by managing the human aspects of change.
• Portfolio Management – Ensures an organization has the right mix of programs, projects, products and services to execute its strategy within its funding and resource constraints.
• Project Management – Ensures that all of an organization’s projects are delivered successfully. PMP & Prince2 are the methodologies available.
• Risk Management – Ensures that an organization understands and effectively handles risk either through avoidance, mitigation, transfer or acceptance.
• Service Financial Management – Supports the organization’s strategies and plans for service management by ensuring that the organization’s financial resources and investments are being used effectively.
• Strategy Management – Here the top management formulates the goals of the organization and adopts the courses of action and allocation of resources necessary for achieving those goals.
• Workforce and Talent Management – Ensures that an organization has the right people with the appropriate skills and knowledge and in the correct roles to support its business objectives.

Service Management Practices

Service Management Practices have been developed in the service management and IT service management industries over the past decades. In ITIL 4 there are 17 service management practices.

• Change Control

This is all about maximizing the number of successful IT changes by ensuring that risks have been properly assessed, authorizing changes to proceed, and managing the change schedule. As you know, change is the addition, modification or removal of anything that could have a direct or indirect effect on IT services. Changes are of three type namely; standard, normal and emergency changes. A standard change is pre-authorized, low risk and well understood (ex: password reset). A normal change requires some level of authorization, is planned and scheduled in advance (ex:server upgrade). Emergency change has an expedited assessment and authorization process so that it is introduced as soon as possible (ex: file server crash).

• Incident Management

The purpose of incident management is to minimize the negative impact of incidents by restoring normal service operation as quickly as possible. As you know, incident is an unplanned interruption to a service or reduction in the quality of service. Every incident must be logged, updated, managed to the agreed upon target resolution times and prioritized. Incident management requires a high level of collaboration within and between the teams.

• Problem Management

This reduces the likelihood and impact of incidents by identifying actual and potential causes of incidents and managing workarounds and known errors. As you know, a problem is a cause or potential cause of one or more incidents. While, a known error is a problem that has been analyzed and has not been resolved. Workaround is a solution that reduces or eliminates the impact of an incident or problem for which a full resolution is not yet available. To summarize, in problem management we find the things that happen again and again and solve the root cause.

• Service Desk

The purpose of this practice is to capture demand for incident resolution and service requests. It should also be the single point of contact for your service provider for all of its users. Once the issue/request is received by the service desk, the workflow is to acknowledge, classify, own and act. There are 4 types, namely’; local, centralized, virtual and follow the sun. A local service desk is located within or close to the users that it serves. A centralized service desk uses a single centralized location to serve all users. It is efficient and cost effective compared to the local service desk. A virtual service desk allows agents to work from multiple, geographically dispersed locations giving the impression of a centralized service desk. In follow the sun, two or more geographically dispersed service desks are combined to provide 24hr follow the sun coverage.

• Service Level Management (SLM)

The purpose of this practice is to set clear business based targets for service performance so that the delivery of a service can be properly assessed, monitored and managed against those targets. All of the service levels will be written down in a service level agreement (SLA). SLA can be defined as a documented agreement between a service provider and a customer, that identifies services required and the expected level of service. SLA should be written in a simple language and should be easy to understand. Other than SLA, things like initial listening, customer feedback, business metrics, operational metrics (ex: server uptime) etc can go into the SLM. SLM affects all the value chain activities.

• Service Request Management (SRM)

This supports the agreed quality of a service by handling all predefined, user initiated service requests in an effective and user friendly manner. Service Request (SR) is a request from a user or user’s authorized representative that initiates a service action that has been agreed as a normal part of service delivery. SRs can have simple/complex workflows, but make sure to test, optimize and then automate the steps involved. To summarize, SRM is all about making sure the users are getting what they need so that they can operate at peak efficiency (ex: provision a resource, increase capacity etc).

• IT Asset Management

The purpose is to plan and manage the full life cycle of all IT assets, to help the organization : maximize value, control costs, manage risks, support decision making about purchase/re-use/retirement of assets, meet regulatory and contractual requirements. IT Asset can be defined as any valuable component that can contribute to the delivery of an IT product or service.

• Monitoring and Event Management

The purpose is to systematically observe a service or service component, and record, report selected changes of state identified as events. Event is any change of state that has significance for the management of a configuration item (CI) or IT service (ex: successful login, failed login).

• Release Management

The purpose is to make new and changed services and features available for use.

• Service Configuration Management

Here the purpose is to ensure that accurate and reliable information about the configuration of services, and the CIs that support them, is available when and where it is needed. Where configuration item (CI) is any component that needs to be managed in order to deliver an IT service (ex:server, desktop etc).

NOTE : The following practices are mentioned for awareness only and will not be part of the test.

• Availability Management – This ensures services deliver agreed levels of availability to meet the needs of customers and users.
• Business Analysis – This helps to analyze a business or some element of the business, to define its needs and recommend solutions to address those needs, or to solve a problem. This helps to create value.
• Capacity and Performance Management – This ensures services achieve agreed upon and expected performance, satisfying current and future demand in a cost effective way.
• Service Catalog Management – This provides a single source of consistent information on all services and service offerings, and ensures that it is available to the relevant audience. The idea of service catalog management is to tell people what is coming, what is to be taken away and what is currently available.
• Service Continuity Management – This ensures that the availability and performance of a service is maintained at a sufficient level in the event of a disaster.
• Service Design – This is about the practice of designing products and services that are fit for purpose, fit for use, and that can be delivered by the organization and its ecosystem.
• Service Validation and Testing – This ensures that new or changed products and services meet defined requirements.

Technical Management Practices

These have been adapted from technology management domains for service management purposes by expanding or shifting their focus from technology solutions to IT services. In ITIL 4 there are only 3 technology management solutions covered.

• Deployment Management

The purpose is to move new or changed hardware, software, documentation, processes or any other components to live environments. In ITIL 4, release and deployment management are two different things. Release is more about approvals, while deployment is about moving change to the live environment.

NOTE : The following practices are mentioned for awareness only and will not be part of the test.

• Infrastructure and Platform Management – This is responsible for overseeing the infrastructure and platforms used by an organization. Normally, this is people who are inside your Network/Security OC.
• Software Development and Management – This ensures that application meets internal and external stakeholder needs, in terms of functionality, reliability, maintainability, compliance and auditability.

Further Reading :

• Understanding Data Center and Service Desk Operations
• ITSM and System Management Tools : A Basic Guide
• Enterprise IT Infrastructure & Support
• Towards Human Error Zero through KY
• Lean and Six Sigma in brief