Customers details for every single Epic
Asked by Kentaro Iijima:

Hi Jira specialists,

This is Ken, a beginner of Jira. I have never ever posted in Atlassian Community - it is my first post.

It would be great if you could help me out how to link between the customers details (e.g. company name, address, email address, and etc.) and every single Epic.

FYI, the customers do NOT access to our Jira. It means that our customers are NOT the user of our Jira service.

I look forward to your advice.

Best regards,

Ken


Answers:
author: Kentaro Iijima
body: Hi Trudy,

Thank you so much for your prompt help!

*\>Is the customer data stored in another system/database that you want Jira to access?*

The customer data is in other system so far, but it should be exported in CSV or other format. Alternatively, I am more than happy to create a new customer data from scratch.

*\>Will there be only one customer to associate with each Epic?*

No, we have many customers, and they should individually be linked to the respective Epics.

For example, a customer of a first job (=Epic 1) is Company (A), and we got the job through an agent (i). Namely, Epic 1 is represented by (i) and is owned by (A) .

Another example, a customer of a second job (=Epic 2) is Company (B), and we got the job through an agent (ii). In that case, Epic 2 is represented by (i) and is owned by (B) .

*\>How will you know which customer should be associated with each Epic?*

I willl manually make a new link (i.e. newly input the customer's information into Jira) when I newly create every single Epic.

*\>Are you anticipating a need to get reports of Epics based on associated customers, or other reports about how Epics and customers are related?*

It should be both, perhaps...? I need to indicate the owner and the agent in every Epic. Further, I may sort the Epics by the 'owner' or 'agent' once the Epics created.

I am not too sure, whether or not Jira is a good choice for our requirements as discussed above, maybe...?

Best regards,

Ken


author: Trudy Claspill
body: Hello [@Kentaro Iijima](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/5563451)

Welcome to the Atlassian community.

Is the customer data stored in another system/database that you want Jira to access?

Will there be only one customer to associate with each Epic?

How will you know which customer should be associated with each Epic?

Are you anticipating a need to get reports of Epics based on associated customers, or other reports about how Epics and customers are related?

comments: author: Kentaro Iijima
body: Hi Trudy,

It looks I posted my reply into an incorrect box by mistake. My apologies.

Kind regards,

Ken


author: Trudy Claspill
body: Hello Ken,

In your example each Epic had only one Customer and only one agent. Will that always be true, or might you need to associate multiple customers and/or multiple agents to a single Epic?

Would you want people to be able to enter new customer and agent data, or restrict them to selecting from predefined lists?


author: Kentaro Iijima
body: Thank you, Trudy.

*\>In your example each Epic had only one Customer and only one agent. Will that always be true, or might you need to associate multiple customers and/or multiple agents to a single Epic?*

The number of the customer is normally one, but occasionally 2-4 if multiple customers own the project.

The number of the agent should be only one, as far as I know.

*\>Would you want people to be able to enter new customer and agent data, or restrict them to selecting from predefined lists?*

I don't think we need the restriction. I am happy to our Jira members add/edit/delete the customer data. However, it would be easier to simply select the customer if they has already been recorded in our data.

Does it make sense...?

Thank you,

Ken


author: Trudy Claspill
body: Hello Ken,

I'm not sure that Jira by itself is the best fit for your use case.

There are ways that you might make it work for you, with customizations.

For instance you might create issue types called Customer and Agent. You would create an issue of the appropriate type for each Customer and each Agent. You could then link those (through generic issue linking functionality) to the Epics. But reporting on issues based on links can be difficult with only the native Jira functionality.

You might consider creating custom fields in your issues to track each data element for a Customer (name, contact, address, phone number, etc.) and each Agent. But Jira doesn't have a native custom field type for "table" so entering data for multiple customers in one Epic would need a different solution.

If you wanted to predefine the Customers and Agents you could create Select List custom fields for each. Your users could then select the value(s) appropriate to the Epic. A Select List field can be either single selection or multiple selection, so you could select multiple Customers for each Epic. But keeping any other attributes in Jira related to each customer, like address and phone number, does not fit into that model.

There might be apps in the [Atlassian Marketplace](https://marketplace.atlassian.com) that would help you. I have not had this particular use case before, so I'm not already aware of ones that would be helpful.


author: Kentaro Iijima
body: Hello Trudy,

Thank you for your prompt and detailed advice. Deeply appreciated.

Got it, I will review our requirements again and visit Atlassian Marketplace.

Thank you very much again,

Ken


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