The software, initially designed to help IT teams track and resolve service requests, can now be configured for use in non-tech areas such as HR and legal. Credit: Atlassian Atlassian has expanded the focus of its Jira Service Desk to target a wider range of business teams, such as HR, legal and facilities workers. Jira Service Desk, launched six years ago to help IT teams track and resolve service requests quickly, has since been integrated with the Australian software company’s portfolio of apps, such as Confluence, as well as third-party apps like Slack. It is the fastest growing product in Atlassian’s portfolio. Although billed as a collaborative IT service management (ITSM) tool, many Jira Service Desk customers have, in practice, adapted the application to deliver a variety of services to end users in the enterprise, Atlassian said. With that in mind, the company today introduced new templates and workflows in Jira Service Desk to encourage its use outside of IT. Templates make it easier to configure the application to better meet the demands from HR, facilities and legal teams. The “out-of-the-box” functionality allows HR or operations managers to create and maintain their own service desks with minimal involvement from IT, Atlassian said. “HR and facilities teams can now leverage Jira Service Desk to more easily manage tasks like employee on-boarding and fielding maintenance requests, and legal teams can shift from manually chasing down signatures to working collaboratively with an automated digital workflow,” the company said in a blog post. The announcement comes as a range of vendors in the market, including ServiceNow and others, have also moved to expand their products with modules that support non-IT use, driving a trend around enterprise service management (ESM). So it makes sense for Atlassian to expand its app capabilities, said Charles Betz, a principal analyst at Forrester and co-author of “The Forrester Wave: Enterprise Service Management, Q4 2019,” which evaluates vendors in the ESM market. “At Forrester, we are very supportive of the extension of the service desk into broader non-IT-centric workloads, because every corporate function has a service aspect,” said Betz. “People need services from their HR department, they need services from facilities.” Betz added that demand for non-IT use is growing quickly. A Forrester survey of 45 ESM customers showed that 78% were already using the tools for non-IT purposes. “And of that 78%, up to half of their transactional workload was non-IT workload,” he added. Atlassian recently unveiled free and premium tiers of Jira Service Desk, with users able to pay more for higher for 99.99% uptime SLA, unlimited storage and additional support. Related content news analysis Apple earnings: About that iPhone 'slump' in China Based on information from Thursday's earnings report, it seems that data pointing to an iPhone slump in China were over-baked. By Jonny Evans May 03, 2024 9 mins iMac iPhone Apple news Microsoft begins to phase out ‘classic’ Teams Microsoft is encouraging Teams customers to move to the new, faster version of the collaboration app; the older version will be switched off next year. By Matthew Finnegan May 03, 2024 3 mins Microsoft Teams Collaboration Software Productivity Software news analysis Apple confirms it will open up the iPad in Europe this fall The latest efforts to comply with Europe’s Digital Markets Act mean developers can offer to side load apps to both iPhones and iPads in the EU. Apple has also taken steps to improve what it offers to smaller and non-commercial developers in the By Jonny Evans May 02, 2024 6 mins iPad Apple Mobile Apps news Udacity offers laid-off US workers free access to its courses for 30 days Sign-ups will be available over the next 30 days By Lucas Mearian May 02, 2024 4 mins Technology Industry IT Jobs IT Skills Podcasts Videos Resources Events SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER From our editors straight to your inbox Get started by entering your email address below. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe