Configure Jira integration with Admin By Request

This guide shows how to set up Admin By Request with your Jira Service Management instance to receive requests directly in Jira.

To configure the integration, there are a few pre-requisites that this guide will go through:

• Create custom fields in Jira
• Create custom request type

We will also show the option to set up automated flows to handle approvals and denials directly from Jira.

To complete the setup, you will need the following:

• An Admin By Request API-key (Can be generated from: https://www.adminbyrequest.com/Settings?Type=0&Page=Data&Tab=4)
• A Jira Service Management username
• An Jira Service Management API token associated with the username (https://support.atlassian.com/atlassian-account/docs/manage-api-tokens-for-your-atlassian-account/)

Once you have this information, we’re ready to get started.

Create Custom Fields

The integration requires you to set up a few custom fields. These fields holds information about:

• The ID of the request from Admin By Request (can be used for further automation)
• The name of the approver (if the request is approved from the platform or via another integration)
• The reason supplied if a request is denied

To set up the custom fields, navigate to your Jira Service Management instance, click on the cog in the upper right corner and select “Issues”:

In the left-hand menu, select “Custom fields”:

Now, create the following custom fields:

• Handled by (Text field)
• Reason (Text field – multiline)
• Request ID (Text field)

You don’t have to select any specific views for the fields. These will be assigned when creating the request type in the next step.

Create Custom Request Type

Next, go to the app selector and select “Jira Service Management”.

From withing Service Management, either create a new project or select the project you want to integrate with.

Open the desired project and select “Project setting” from the left-hand menu:

Next, select “Request types” from the menu:

Then select “Create request type” -> “Create custom” to create a new request type:

Give the request type a name and select the Issue type as either:

• [System] Service request
  This will send requests to Jira and update these as they get approved or denied.
  
• [System] Service request with approval
  Works in the same way as the ordinary service request type but will allow users to approve or deny requests from within Jira.
  With a bit of automation, this will also enable Jira to call the Admin By Request API to approve or deny requests directly.

Next, select the portal group to assign to this new request type:

Next, drag and drop the 3 newly created custom fields as well as the “description”-field into the view of the new request type:

You can leave the Request ID field as “Use preset value and hide from portal” if you do not wish the Request ID to be visible.

Save the changes.

Integrate with Admin By Request

Now that the pre-requisites are in place, head over to https://jira.adminbyrequest.com to start the setup process.

Click the “Start setup” button to get started:

Fetch your Atlassian API Token as well as your Admin By Request API key and enter these into the setup form alongside your Atlassian username and instance URL:

Hit “Continue”.

You’ll be prompted to select the Jira service desk to associate with the integration:

Select the service desk to use and click “Select service desk”.

The next step will allow you to select the newly created request type and custom fields.

Select the request type and custom fields created in the pre-requisites and hit “Finish installation”.

That’s it! You’ve successfully set up the Jira integration. New requests from Admin By Request will now be sent to your Jira instance as service requests.

Updates

Once a request is either approved or denied, Admin By Request will attempt to send an update back to Jira as well. This will prefix the corresponding request in Jira with either “APPROVED – [Ticket header]” or “DENIED – [Ticket header]” – allowing you to set up your own automation based on the state.

Configure Automated Flows

If you’ve selected to create a request type with approval, you can set up automation to send the approve or decline action to Admin By Request via the public API: https://www.adminbyrequest.com/en/docs/requests-api

To approve a request, we need to call:

PUT [API-URL]/requests/[ID]

and to deny a request:

DELETE [API-URL]/requests/[ID]

To set up the automation, go to your Jira Service Management project settings and select “Automation”:

This will present you with a list of all of your automation rules. In the top right corner, click the “Create rule” button.

Select the “Approval completed” trigger:

And click “Save”:

This ensures that the automation rule is triggered every time a request is either accepted or denied in Jira Service Management.

Next step is to ensure that our current trigger is only run when the request type is our specific Admin By Request type. To do this, select “IF: Add a condition” from the actions list:

Select the “issue fields condition” item:

As “Field”, select “Request type”. Leave the condition as “Equals” and select the request type you create for request from Admin By Request:

And hit “Save”.

Now that our trigger is only run for approvals made for the Admin By Request Request Type, it’s time to figure out whether or not the request has been accepted or declined. In order to do this, we’ll check the value of an internal Jira field called approval.decision.

To check this value, we’ll create another condition. So from the actions list, once again select “IF: Add a condition”:

As the action, select the “Advanced compare condition” and insert the following values:

• First value = {{approval.decision}}
• Condition = equals
• Second value = Approved

And hit “Save”.

Our trigger will now only run if it’s an approval of a request of the Admin By Request Request Type which has the decision of “Approved”.

If this is the case, we’ll want to call the Admin By Request API in order to actually approve the request in the Admin By Request ecosystem.

To do this, we will need to create yet another action. This time the “THEN: Add action”:

From in here select the “Send web request” action. This will allow you to create a REST call to the public Admin By Request API.

In order to do this, you will need two things:

• An Admin By Request API key. You can generate this by logging into the Admin By Request portal and going to Settings -> Windows settings -> Data -> API Keys [link to documentation]
• The field ID of the custom Jira field you created for the Request ID. To find the ID of the custom field, navigate to the Custom Fields section in Jira (where you created the custom field to begin with), find the Request ID custom field and click the “more”-icon:

From the context-menu select “Edit details”. Your custom field ID will now show as the id-property in the URL-bar – in this example the custom field ID is 10064:

Back in the automation screen, setup the “Send web request” form with the following:

• Web request url needs to be the URL for the Admin By Request requests API. Please note that your api-URL might differ depending on your geographical location – [LINK TO FIND YOUR API URL].
  Please also note the the custom fields id is inserted at the end of the field in for format {{issue.fields.customfield_[THE ID OF YOUR CUSTOM FIELD]}}
• Headers – here we need to add 2 headers:
  • apikey – containing the Admin By Request API key fetched from the portal
  • Contenct-Length – just set this to 0
• The Http method should be PUT and the web request body should just be empty.

Hit “Save”. You’re now able to give your automation rule a name and activate it by selecting “Turn it on”:

You’ve now created an automation rule that will allow you to approve requests from Admin By Request directly in Jira.

We’re almost finished. We just need to create an automation rule that will allow us to decline a request. The easiest way to do this is to simply copy the rule we just created and then change a few parameters.

To create a copy, go to the automations list, find the newly created automation, and click the “more”-icon and select “Copy”:

This will bring up a copy of the automation rule. Give it a fitting name – e.g., “Admin By Request Decline” and hit “Save”:

Next – click the “And: Compare two values” step and change the “Second value” field to “Declined”:

And hit “Save”. This will tell our automation to only run if the approval has been declined.

The final step is to call the “Denied” part of the Admin By Request API. To do this, select the “Then: Send web request” step and change the following values:

• Delete the Content-Length header
• Change the HTTP method to DELETE

And hit “Save”.

Now, publish the new rule and you’re finished:

You’ve now successfully set up automation rules that will allow you to approve or deny requests in the Admin By Request ecosystem directly from Jira Service Management.

Once a new request from Admin By Request is sent over to Jira, it’ll give the supporter the option to either approve or decline the request:

Selecting either of these options will trigger one of the automation rules, which will update the Admin By Request platform with the selected action.

Depending on your Jira setup, you can continue doing different automations for Admin By Request. Maybe approved requests should have another state? Maybe you want specific assignment groups to these requests? Using the fields on the new request type, you can tailor the setup to fit your specific needs.