Keep Jira Service Management requests moving while an agent is on vacation

The problem

Requests assigned to an agent stay in their name while they are away, and e-mails to them go unanswered. Colleagues either do not notice, or reassign by hand and nobody remembers to give the work back.

Step by step

1. Covered projects. An administrator adds the service desk project to the projects the app works in and keeps the policy on “reassign all open issues”.
2. Request. The agent requests the vacation and picks a colleague from the same desk as substitute; the team lead gets an e-mail and approves it.
3. Mailbox. The agent’s automatic reply and calendar entry are scheduled straight away; the reply can name the substitute if the administrator allows it.
4. Cover. On the first day, the agent’s open requests in that project go to the substitute, who gets an e-mail. Anyone opening such a request sees who is covering.
5. Hand back. Once the vacation is over, the requests the substitute still holds go back to the agent.

What to watch out for

The substitute must be assignable in the service desk project, and the absent agent must be allowed to assign issues there; requests the substitute cannot take are skipped and counted. If someone assigns a request to the absent agent, an internal comment follows — the customer never sees it in the portal.