Corporate attorneys, paralegals, and legal teams bring tremendous business value to the organization. The nature of their work might be something of a mystery to the rest of their workplace, but they play an important role in defending companies from risk and trouble. If their work wasn’t already complex enough, add on a pandemic that scatters your teams to the wind, prevents in-person meetings, and even makes the courtroom process digital. You’re in for a bit of a headache if your processes aren’t digitized, which essentially means they aren’t effective in today’s landscape where the pandemic and distributed teams continue to be part of our day-to-day lives.

The presence of friction and bad processes can expose a company to risks and vulnerabilities they might not experience otherwise. Especially if they’re unprepared to handle emergency circumstances. Is your team as prepared as they need to be?

If this all seems familiar, and your legal team needs to add digital workflows and other optimization to its traditional working practices, then this blog can help. Let's discuss what can be delivered through the use of a Service Management approach to back-office digital transformation.

Is the Reliance on Manual Practices Hurting Your Legal Team?

Legal teams, like many other business functions, have operated for years using a hybrid of manual and email-based processes. It has worked, in some sense, because the work got done. However, the logistical impact of remote working has highlighted the many issues of manually-based operations, including delays and human error. These are some of the ways manual processes can negatively impact your legal team:

• Lack of clarity into staff workloads, progress against targets, future demand levels, and team performance
• The absence of automation creates more manual work, taking time away that could be spent on process improvements or other work
• Harder to build out practices and processes that are efficient and scalable as your organization grows and evolves

Learn what other organizations and teams think about Service Management and its importance in the workplace in our 2021 State of Service Management Report.

This lack of visibility into operations, service, experience, and outcomes makes it difficult to understand the true level of performance (in terms of success) and to identify key issues where improvements are needed.

Creating a Legal Digital Working Environment Using Service Management

Similar to how a Service Management approach supports the employee onboarding process, Service Management offers a variety of capabilities to legal teams that range from service design, through operations, to performance management and improvement. Here are some of the benefits your legal teams could experience by implementing a service management tool and practices.

• Digital work intake – rather than new work requests being submitted by paper or emailed forms, a legal self-service portal can be employed. The portal can also be used in conjunction with knowledge management for self-help. In addition, there’s 24/7 availability of legal self-help capabilities, including where employees want to check the status of their open legal requests.
• Leveraging focused digital workflows – with each designed to match particular needs relative to the work request type, the involved business function, or both. These employ automation where possible and benefit from service level targets, notifications, alerts, approvals, escalations, and associated reporting and analytics to optimize performance. 
• More-effective knowledge access and use – legal staff are archetypal knowledge workers and as such will benefit from the ability to quickly identify, access, and use collective knowledge.
• Improved collaboration capabilities – whether this is as simple as quickly bringing a colleague onto a particular piece of work or the ability to work with others outside of the legal team or the organization.
• Superior reporting and analytics – given that work is now handled digitally “from cradle to grave” it makes it easier to gain visibility into operations, performance, demand, and improvement opportunities. For example, to optimize legal staffing based on demand relative to the required number of people and specific knowledge and skills. Especially where self-help and automation ease some of the pressure on legal personnel.
• Improved governance, risk management, compliance, and security – for example, the digital workflows make it easier to benefit from internal controls and audit trails. Plus, modern service management tools offer granular security permissions such that access to information can be limited down to specific groups and even individuals.

If you would like to learn more about how service management can accelerate the operations and outcomes of your legal team, get in touch with us at Praecipio!

One key component of managing your Atlassian products is managing their upgrades. Upgrades can present a daunting and significant time investment for many companies, generally involving apps, custom-developed plugins, and integrations, with a large number of users dependent on their success.

You know what upgrades are and that they're important. So why am I talking to you about them? Imagine the scenario, you're busy, you haven't had a chance to check in on the latest Atlassian security vulnerabilities and the emails you've received about them have been missed. You have also had higher priority work eating up team time, which has prevented the planning and execution of your Atlassian upgrades. One day, your instance comes under attack through one of the vulnerabilities exposed in the CVE. Your data is potentially exposed. An urgent, large, expensive, complex effort ensues in order to secure the instance; after 3 days, 2 full sweeps of the instance and multiple upgrades, the vulnerabilities are mitigated and your instance is safe.

Are you confident in when your applications are due an upgrade? Let's review a few common reasons why an upgrade may be recommended:

End of Life Policy

Once Atlassian has released a major feature version, it, and all iterations related to that major version, are supported for two years. After that, the versions are considered End of Life, and you will no longer receive support from Atlassian for any issues which arise. It is when reaching this point, that many people start considering upgrading their instances.

Security Vulnerabilities

Every Wednesday, Atlassian releases any new security vulnerabilities which have been identified for their server/data center products. These vulnerabilities include a security level, which is based on an Atlassian-calculated CVSS score for each vulnerability.

Severity Rating System followed by Atlassian:

Although there may be opportunities to mitigate security vulnerabilities in your current version, it is recommended to patch or upgrade immediately when a Critical vulnerability is identified. Vulnerabilities with a critical score generally result in root-level compromise or servers or infrastructure devices, or are straightforward to exploit.

Current security advisories can be found here:

https://www.atlassian.com/trust/security/advisories

New Functionality/Capabilities

Did you know that there is a new feature release for Jira Software every 6 weeks alone? Atlassian encourage users to submit bugs and feature requests at jira.atlassian.com. This public forum allows users to vote for and comment on submitted issues, and the Atlassian team utilize this and other feedback as a factor in their decision for what to implement next.  Platform releases contain the most significant changes, while Feature releases contain new features, changes to features, changes to supported platforms and removal of features. Feature releases can be designated as Enterprise releases, which, generally designated annually, are preferred for companies who need time to prepare for upgrades, but still want to receive critical bug fixes.

Compatibility with other Server Components

From time to time, Atlassian add and deprecate support for other server component platforms which work alongside your Atlassian application. For example, did you know that in Jira Software 8.6 and Jira Service Desk 4.6, support was added for PostgreSQL 10 and deprecated for Internet Explorer 11, whereas in Jira Software 8.8 and Jira Service Desk 4.8, support was deprecated for Microsoft SQL Server 2012 and PostgreSQL 9.4 & 9.5. To ensure optimal operation of your Atlassian instances, it's just as important to upgrade components of your server architecture, as well as your instances themselves.

Plugin Support

If you are one of the many teams who utilize plugins within their Atlassian applications, plugin compatibility and support is another area to be aware of when considering upgrades. Has support been deprecated for the plugin with the Atlassian version you're running? Is the plugin still supported when you upgrade to your target version? Atlassian have developed the Universal Plugin Manager, available in both Jira and Confluence, to enable you to screen for any compatibility problems prior to starting your upgrade. There are 4 categories for Compatibility which plugins can fall into - Incompatible (the plugin is not compatible with the target version), Compatible, Compatible if updated (the plugin is not currently compatible, but will be once running the compatible version), and Compatible once both are updated (the new version of the plugin isn't compatible with your current instance version - you need to upgrade your instance prior to updating the plugin).

Unable to Skip a Platform Release

When considering which version you'd like to upgrade to, it's important to consider your current version and your target version. When upgrading, it is not possible to skip a platform release - therefore, for example, when considering a Jira Software upgrade, it is not possible to jump from a 6.X release to the 8.X release and skip the 7.X release, you would need to take an intermediate step to upgrade to a 7.X version. Due to the functionality changes being much greater between platform releases which are not adjacently sequenced, there are more edge cases, and thus, greater risk, when navigating an upgrade spanning multi platform releases.

For assistance with upgrading your applications, partner with Praecipio's Modern Service Management team! Our team, fully dedicated to the Atlassian stack, offer peace of mind through managing, supporting, and maintaining your Atlassian tools, enabling you to maximize the benefits of your Atlassian applications while allowing your team to focus on their core roles. Working with our Modern Service Management team offers tribal knowledge and best practice from over 10 years working in the tools, allowing us to enable your Atlassian stack is optimized and operating at peak performance.

For more information on Managed Services, or anything else Atlassian related, contact us, and one of our experts will be glad to talk with you.

Customer Satisfaction, or CSAT, is a customer experience metric measuring satisfaction with a product, service or support interaction. The metric is captured through a short simple survey to enable the customer to provide their feedback.

CSAT in Jira Service Management

Did you know that your customer feedback is collected by default within Jira Service Management Projects? This means that when an issue is resolved, the customer receives an email requesting their feedback through a simple question such as "How satisfied were you with our service?". That simple question is editable, and can be defined by your project admin.

Remember, if you're utilizing next-gen projects, site administrator access is required to edit your CSAT survey question

There's a handy Satisfaction report built into Jira Service Management, visible to project administrators and agents. This report displays average customer satisfaction scores, as well as individual scores and comments for the team. You can toggle the report anywhere from the past 48 hours, all the way up to the past year by month!

It's also possible to configure your own custom report to track satisfaction trends. For example, you may want to see satisfaction by assignee, satisfaction by service request, or even a trend graph to track satisfaction changes over time.

The Pros of CSAT

CSAT, a very popular methodology, offers a quick and easy way to entice customers to give feedback. This then provides a clear metric for you to understand customer expectations, and work to exceed them. With CSAT enabled, your customers will receive a survey every time their request is resolved. This enables you to track customer satisfaction at different stages of their journey with your team, making bottlenecks and areas for improvement clear, with very little effort on your part.

CSAT also offers a fast way to compare yourself to your peers. According to the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), the average CSAT score across the nation is 76.5% - that's just over 3/4 of your customers reporting a satisfying experience. This figure differs by industry - you may not be too surprised to hear that, in 2019, Internet Service Providers and Subscription Television Services reported low CSAT benchmarks of 62%, while Breweries reported a much more favorable CSAT benchmark of 85%. But remember, while it is useful to be able to compare yourself to your competition, the true value from CSAT comes when you analyze and utilize feedback to drive continuous improvement and better your own customer experience.

Considerations of CSAT

While CSAT is a useful metric to track, there are a few considerations to take into account. The customer who takes the time to fill out their satisfaction is likely one who is happy with the service they received. Customers who are unhappy, or just moderately satisfied, are less likely to complete the survey, which can skew the data. CSAT has also been found to be a poor measure of loyalty - although poor CSAT scores can predict attrition, a high CSAT score has not been found to be a reliable predictor of repeat business. Cultural differences should also be taken into account - different standards and expectations will affect the score that customers are driven to pick, which, in part, can make it difficult to understand true customer satisfaction.

So, CSAT isn't a unicorn which can address all customer concerns with support. However, it does offer a valuable insight; one which should be paired with other tools to track and measure customer satisfaction. At Praecipio, we can help you make the most out of the benefits of collecting CSAT in Jira Service Management, and use those results along with other anecdotal evidence such as customer comments, number of tickets raised, cadence call discussions, and repeat business, to drive change, improve your customer offerings, and ultimately, reap the rewards!

Do you find yourself tasked with administering Atlassian tools on top of the normal duties of your job? Have you ever been faced with an Atlassian question that is out of your wheelhouse? Are you interested in improvement opportunities to configure your instance and architecture to Atlassian best practice standards? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then read on!

With a wide range of Atlassian products available, and a marketplace full of apps to accompany those, it's hard to find admins who specialize in everything. Particularly with the Atlassian toolset being highly configurable, administrators should be able to analyze a request and advise the correct path forward, balancing functionality available to them, with corporate governance and best practice processes. Here at Praecipio Consulting, we have the answer to this unicorn, part-time, full-stack Atlassian admin, through our Managed Services offering.

Atlassian Experts, Best Practice

With over 10 years of Atlassian experience, our team has knowledge across the full stack - whether your question is about hosting considerations, tuning, networking, infrastructure, process-related, Marketplace Apps, or anything else, we can advise and implement functional, practical, industry-specific, best practice processes to maximize efficiencies among your teams. As we are squarely focused on the Atlassian toolset, your IT teams can focus on all of their other tasks, driving productivity and innovation among your team.

Preventative Measures

We're proactive, with bi-monthly cadence calls to discuss your long term goals and objectives, and monthly health checks to ensure your instance is secure, clean, and performing efficiently. We monitor Atlassian vulnerabilities, alerting you of any CVEs affecting your instance, alongside recommendations to mitigate. If you are hosting with us through Cumulus, we monitor your systems too, identifying and resolving issues before they become expensive incidents, and minimizing downtime.

Predictable Cost, Scalable Model

Whether you're utilizing Atlassian Cloud, Server, or Data Center, whether you need 9-5 support, or 24x7, we're always here to help. You dictate your monthly hours cap, enabling Atlassian administrative support at a fraction of the cost of hiring an admin. Even with the cap, it's possible to utilize more hours - managed services is scalable as your business and Atlassian needs grow.

Relationships

As Platinum Enterprise solution partners to Atlassian, we're big on relationships with our clients, Atlassian, and App vendors. When faced with issues, we can be the connection between yourselves and the answer you need, to discover the optimal outcome available for your circumstances. We're vested in your instances being healthy and working for your business: allow us to be a trusted partner in helping your business grow.

Praecipio Managed Services can help with your Atlassian needs, we'd love to talk to you more about our offering! 

One of the most powerful integrations in the Atlassian ecosystem is the native link between Jira and Confluence. For users working in both tools, the transition can be seamless if you do it right, but clunky if you don't. 

Now, what if I told you there was just one Confluence macro you could start using today that will immediately make reporting in Confluence easier and help you (and your team) keep track of your work? The Jira Issues macro is the go-to when reporting in Confluence.

Here are some tips to get your team to live their Atlassian life-to-the-fullest.

Insert an issue count for a Jira filter

Let's start small. Insert a link to Jira with the number of issues returned from a Jira Query Language (JQL) query.

This is useful to pull up basic metrics for a high-level overview. The macro becomes a link to the filter, so if you want to review the issues in-depth, you can quickly hop over to Jira's issue navigator. The table below is an example of how our marketing team tracks employee blog post submissions.

To insert an issue count:

1. Insert the Jira Macro
   1. Select the  in the top menu bar and select Jira Issue/Filter, OR
   2. Type { on your Confluence page, search and select Jira
2. Enter in your JQL query
   1. To input an existing filter, type "filter = "Filter name", OR
   2. Type in the JQL directly
   3. Be sure to click on the Magnifying glass to execute the query
3. Select 'Display Options' at the bottom of the dialog box to expand the options.
4. Select 'Total issue count'
5. Click Insert, and Voila!

Insert a single issue into Confluence

This macro can also link to a single Jira issue to a Confluence page. That means not only can you see what issues are important (and what status they're in) in your documentation, but you can also see who's talking about the issue when you're in Jira.

Take, for example, this blog post. My progress is tracked on a Jira issue, linked to this very page in Confluence. Below you can see how it looks on the Confluence page I'm writing in. 

If I click on that link, I'll move over to Jira where I can see all of pages in which the issue has been mentioned under Issue Links. Right off the bat, I can see that the issue has been mentioned on this page as well as another tracking Blog Content. 

To insert one issue:

1. Insert the Jira Macro and enter in your query (steps 1 and 2 above)
2. Select one issue from the list
   1. If you know exactly which issue, you can simply type the Issue Key into the search bar and hit enter. 
3. Expand the Display Options and select 'Single Issue'
4. Select 'Insert'

Use the Jira macro to insert a list of issues in a page in Confluence

Remember that filter you entered in above? You can insert that filter into your page, too. Filters inserted with this macro are dynamic - that is, as the issues are updated in Jira, the Confluence page will reflect the most up-to-date information. You can customize which columns appear in the macro just like you can in Jira. To head into Jira, you can select the individual issues, or click on the total number at the bottom ('2 issues') to pull up the query in Jira.

To insert a filter:

1. Insert the Jira Macro and enter in your query (steps 1 and 2 above)
2. Expand the Display options and select 'Table' 
3. Edit the maximum issues and columns to display.
4. Select 'Insert' to add to the page!

Create a Jira Issue from a Confluence page

If your issues don't exist in Jira yet, don't worry. This macro can create new issues in Jira if inspiration hits while you're editing a Confluence page. The issue will be created and you won't even have to leave the page. 

Additionally, you can also create issues from Confluence while viewing a page - simply highlight some text and then click on the Jira icon that appears.

1. Insert the Jira Issue Macro
2. Select 'Create New Issue' on the left panel
3. Complete the form
4. Select 'Insert'

This one macro can solve many of your reporting needs in Confluence. What's more, you can provide context around the data instead of just straight data. The Jira Macro is a great way to keep team members informed without navigating from Confluence to Jira and back again. 

Do you have any questions about how you and your team can best utilize your Jira and Confluence tools for maximum benefit? Find out more about how Praecipio Consulting can help by visiting our Atlassian Hosting page or by contacting us directly.

Want some more Jira tips? Check out our blog: Guide to Import Linked Issues in Jira from CSV.