Work with requests and issues in Jira Cloud products

Different organizations use Jira to track different kinds of issues, which can represent anything from a software bug, to a project task, or a leave request form. In Jira Service Management, customer requests are automatically triaged into queues, so you can easily find the issues you need to work on. If you are ready to jump in and learn more about working on and managing customer issues, you're in the right place.

In Jira Service Management, an issue is a packet of work that agents work on. In an IT service project, it represents an incident, a change, and a service request, etc. For example, a customer request of "Our printer is not working" appears as follows in the customer portal:

As an agent, you will pick the issue up internally in the service project to work on and it will look like the following:

Project and issue keys

Issue keys

Issue keys are unique identifiers for every piece of work you track with Jira. They are easily recognizable and quick to remember.

You'll see issue keys:

• On issues themselves, as a label
• In search results and saved filters
• On cards on your boards or in a project's backlog
• In links connecting pieces of work
• In the issue's URL
• Anywhere you need to reference the work you're tracking

Issue keys are made up of two parts:

1. The project key (SMART in the screenshot above)
2. A sequential number

Project keys

Project keys are a series of alphanumberic characters that describe to people across your Jira site what pieces of work are related to your project. They're the most memorable and recognizable piece of an issue's identifier. For example, our team is codenamed Donut World. We use the project key "DONUT" to help people across Atlassian know and recognize work that relates to our team.

Project admins can create and assign their project's key when they create a new project. Based on the project's name, Jira suggests a recognizable key. If you're a project admin, you can customize this while creating a project by selecting Advanced options. You can also update it in the project's settings. They must be at least 2 characters long and start with an uppercase letter. Read more about editing a project's details.