How To Set Up Virtual Agent in Jira Service Management

IT support teams are under pressure to resolve tickets and maintain satisfaction scores. Jira Service Management's virtual agent addresses both. It routes and answers common requests automatically, cutting response times without adding headcount.

Setup moves faster than most teams anticipate. This guide walks through the configuration steps and shows how to get the virtual agent running in your environment.

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TL;DR

‍A step-by-step setup guide for JSM's virtual agent, with a clear-eyed look at its limitations and a pivot to ClearFeed as an alternative for Slack-first teams.

The gist

• The virtual agent in Jira Service Management is an AI assistant that auto-answers common requests, integrates with Confluence, and escalates unresolved queries — but it's locked behind the Premium plan, which starts at $44.27/agent/month.
• Setup is 7 steps: navigate to Project Settings, enable Virtual Service Agent, set a default request type, create intents with training phrases, enable Atlassian Intelligence answers, and the agent goes live in your customer portal automatically.
• Connecting it to Slack requires Atlassian Assist and two dedicated Slack channels: one for the bot (agent channel) and one for incoming requests (request channel).
• Four honest limitations are flagged: struggles with complex issues, depends heavily on a well-maintained knowledge base, inconsistent accuracy, and limited integration with non-Atlassian tools.
• ClearFeed's virtual agent is a more accessible alternative, especially for teams already in Slack who don't want to pay the JSM Premium premium just to unlock AI features.

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What Is a Virtual Agent in Jira Service Management?

A virtual agent in Jira Service Management (JSM) is a smart assistant powered by AI. It's all about making support better and easier. Here's what it does:

• Answers questions automatically
• Helps solve simple problems quickly
• Let human agents focus on trickier issues

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How Does a Virtual Agent Help Businesses?

Using a virtual agent in JSM doesn't just help employees and customers - it helps your whole business:

• Automated Issue Resolution: The virtual agent efficiently handles common requests, such as password resets, software access, and access to knowledge-based articles. This reduces human workload and increases productivity.
• Enhanced Support: By integrating with chat platforms such as Slack and Microsoft Teams, the virtual agent provides immediate responses to employee and customer inquiries. This ensures faster service and improved service desk performance.​ For teams requiring additional communication channels, ClearFeed extends this multi-channel capability to include email, web chat, customer portals, and automated ticket syncing across all platforms.‍
• Knowledge Base Integration: It is connected to knowledge bases such as Confluence, allowing it to suggest relevant articles or troubleshooting guides to speed up issue resolution.‍
• Data-Driven Improvements: It continually improves its responses through constant interaction and feedback. 

These agents are also scalable, meaning they can manage increased workloads without additional personnel.

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Getting Started With Virtual Agent

Setting up a virtual agent in Jira Service Management requires careful planning and a step-by-step approach. Let's break down what you need and how to do it:

What You Need Before Starting:

• Admin Access: You'll need special permissions to make changes and add new features. Regular user access isn't enough.
• The Right Plan: The virtual agent is only for Premium or Enterprise customers. Check if your company has activated Atlassian Intelligence.

Why These Matter:

• Having Jira Service Management ready means your virtual agent has a home to work in.
• Admin access lets you set things up without hitting roadblocks.

Integration Planning: Consider how your team will manage tickets created by the virtual agent—whether through JSM alone or alongside additional ticketing workflows. Planning automation rules and team assignments up front ensures smooth escalation of complex issues.

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How To Set Up a Virtual Agent in Jira Service Management?

Here's the complete process for setting up a virtual agent in Jira Service Management with Atlassian Assist:

1. Go to your service project in JSM. Then, select Project settings from the sidebar.

2. Click on Virtual Service Agent under Project settings.

3. Choose a Default request type that the agent will use when it can't resolve a request.

4. Click Create Intent, then give it a name and description.

Once that's done, the next step is to help the virtual agent learn to handle customer queries by providing training phrases.

5. Provide the virtual agent with a default message to help it answer questions more effectively. When someone asks for something that matches the words the virtual agent already knows, it will quickly return the correct answer.

6. In the Virtual service agent settings, turn on Atlassian Intelligence answers to allow the agent to pull answers from your knowledge base.

7. Once you’ve set at least one intent to Live or enabled Atlassian Intelligence answers, the agent will automatically go live in your customer portal.

With these steps completed, your virtual agent is ready to enhance your service desk operations. As you fine-tune its responses and integrate additional features, the virtual agent will continue to improve, helping you deliver faster, more accurate support. Ensure you test how the setup works.

💡To make the Virtual agent more efficient, integrate it with your knowledge base so it can provide relevant articles and troubleshooting steps.

How To Integrate Jira Virtual Agent With Slack?

Connecting Jira's virtual service agent to Slack makes teamwork easier. It lets you do Jira tasks right in Slack. However, first, check if you have Atlassian Assist. You need this to use the service bot. Now, here’s how to proceed with the integration:

1. Go to Virtual service agent > Settings.
2. Click Channels, then select Slack to connect the agent to a Slack channel.

3. In Slack, you'll need two special channels:

• One for the virtual agent bot to live in (called an agent channel)
• Another way for people to ask for help (called a request channel)

4. If you don't have these channels yet, you'll need to make them.
5. If you already have channels that can work, you can just pick those.
6. Once you have the right channels, you can add the Jira service agent to Slack.
7. The bot will then start helping in the channel you picked for it. People can ask for help through the request channel of your choice.

What Are the Challenges of a Virtual Service Agent in Jira?

When people use the Virtual Service Agent in Jira Service Management (JSM), they often encounter issues. Here are the main issues:

1. Can't handle tough problems: The bot is helpful for simple questions, but struggles with complex issues.
2. Depends on good information: If the knowledge base isn't well-maintained, the bot can't provide accurate answers.
3. Not always accurate: The bot's answers can be hit-or-miss, depending on how well it understands the question.
4. Doesn't work with everything: It might not connect with all the tools a company uses.

These problems show that virtual agents still need improvement to work better for support operations. Besides these challenges, there's another big issue:

To use the virtual agent, you need Atlassian Intelligence. But this isn't available for everyone. You can only get it if you pay for the Premium or Enterprise plans. The Premium plan costs at least $44.27 per agent each month. This high price means many smaller businesses can't afford to use the virtual agent at all.

This makes it hard for some companies to use this helpful tool because it's just too expensive. This is where ClearFeed, a Slack-based and AI-driven support platform for B2B organizations, steps in.

Introducing ClearFeed’s Virtual Agent: An Alternative

ClearFeed's virtual agent appears to have several advantages over Jira's virtual agent service bot:

1. Slack Integration: ClearFeed's agent is specifically designed for Slack-based support, making it more convenient for teams already using Slack.
2. GPT-Powered Answers: It uses advanced AI to generate responses that are potentially more accurate and context-aware.
3. Multiple Knowledge Sources: ClearFeed can integrate with various knowledge bases, including Zendesk, Notion, Freshdesk, Google Drive, and Confluence, as well as PDF files.
4. Configurable Answering Modes: Users can choose between full GPT-generated answers and just search results, offering flexibility based on their level of trust in AI.
5. Automatic Ticket Creation: If queries aren't resolved, tickets are automatically created to ensure no customer issue goes unattended.
6. Improved Search and Answer Quality: It uses Cohere Embeddings and an answer-verification module to reduce AI hallucinations.
7. Transparent References: Each answer includes references to source documents, increasing user trust.
8. Specialized FAQ Handling: Enhanced ability to recognize and answer FAQ-type questions.
9. Multi-Channel Ticket Management: Beyond Slack, handle customer requests via email, web chat, and customer portals through a unified interface, with automatic bidirectional syncing back to JSM.
10. Team Assignment and Routing: Automatically route escalated tickets to the right teams or individuals based on rules, capabilities, and availability, reducing manual assignment overhead.
11. SLA Management and Response Tracking: Monitor response and resolution times and receive automatic alerts when SLAs are at risk, helping teams prioritize urgent customer issues.
12. Emoji-Based Ticket Actions: Agents can use simple emoji reactions in Slack to assign tickets, mark them as in progress, or resolve them directly in conversations, eliminating context switching between tools.
13. Centralized Triage Channel: Consolidate tickets from all sources (Slack, email, web chat) into a single Slack channel for unified team visibility and faster response times.
14. Ticket Operations: Merge related tickets, split complex issues into subtasks, or unlink tickets when needed—giving agents full control over the ticket lifecycle.
15. CSAT Surveys and Feedback: Automatically send customer satisfaction surveys after ticket resolution to measure support quality and identify areas for improvement.

While Jira's virtual agent is tightly integrated with Jira Service Management, ClearFeed's solution is more flexible and offers more advanced AI capabilities, as well as better integration with diverse knowledge sources and communication platforms. Interested in learning more about ClearFeed’s Virtual Agent feature? Check out this article and book a demo to see it in action.