If you’re knee-deep in managing support requests, incidents, or changes using Jira Service Management (JSM), you’ve probably heard whispers about AI making things easier. It’s true, AI in JSM isn’t just a fancy term; it’s built to handle the repetitive stuff, help you solve problems faster, and free your team up for the trickier tasks.
But what does it actually do? How much does it cost? And is it really the right fit for your team? In this review, we’re going to break down the AI features built right into JSM, chat about what’s great and what’s not so great, and touch on how other tools can give your AI strategy an extra boost.
What is Jira Service Management AI?
So, what exactly is this JSM AI we’re talking about? Well, Jira Service Management is built on the familiar Jira platform and helps teams like IT, HR, and customer support handle incoming requests without getting swamped.
Jira Service Management AI is basically the set of artificial intelligence features tucked inside the platform. These features use machine learning and generative AI, often called Atlassian Intelligence, to automate tasks that happen over and over, give you smart insights, and lend a hand to both your support agents and the folks needing help. The big idea here is to move past the old-school help desk model and embrace a way of working that’s more proactive, gets things done faster, and can grow with you.
JSM AI features overview
JSM comes with several AI-powered features designed to smooth out your workflows and make the whole support experience better. You’ll mostly find these goodies available on the Premium and Enterprise plans, powered by Atlassian Intelligence.
Here’s a look at what’s on offer:
Automating support conversations
- Virtual Service Agent: Think of this as a chatbot that can understand what customers are asking, dig through linked knowledge base articles (like the ones you keep in Confluence), give them a quick summary, and guide them through a conversation. It’s pretty smart and can even remember what you talked about earlier if you have follow-up questions.
- AI Answers: This uses generative AI to give customers instant answers to their questions by pulling info straight from your knowledge base.
Helping agents and boosting efficiency
- Summarize Issues: Got a super long ticket description or a comment thread that goes on forever? AI can whip up a quick summary so you get the gist fast.
- Draft Replies: The AI can suggest response drafts for your agents, looking at the ticket details and relevant info in your knowledge base.
- Suggestions for Issues: It gives agents helpful context and ideas for what to do next right inside the ticket view.
- Show Customer Sentiment: This feature looks at customer messages and helps agents quickly figure out how the customer is feeling. This can be super useful for deciding which tickets need urgent attention and how to talk to them.
Making workflows and processes smoother
- Intelligent Triage: This automatically sorts and prioritizes incoming tickets based on things like what the customer needs, how they sound (sentiment), and the language they’re using. Then, it sends them to the right queue or agent.
- Suggest Request Types & Fields: Setting up a new service project? AI can help admins by suggesting the right types of requests and form fields based on how you describe the kind of work your team does.
- Create Automation Rules: Tell the AI what you want an automation rule to do, and it can help generate the rule code for you.
- Generate and Transform Content: Need to write a ticket description, a comment, or even a knowledge base article? You can draft content with prompts and even ask the AI to tweak existing text, maybe change the tone or make technical info clearer.
Handling incidents and alerts
- Group Related Alerts: AI can spot similar alerts and group them together. This helps cut down on that overwhelming feeling when a bunch of alerts come in at once (“alert fatigue”).
- View Related Alert Groups: It embeds info about related alert groups right on the individual alert page, so you get context quickly.
- Create Incidents from Alerts: When an alert comes in, AI can help fill in the title, description, and priority when you create an incident from it.
- Create Post-Incident Reviews: AI can automatically put together summaries for those post-incident reviews, saving your on-call team some precious time.
- Find Related Resources: When an incident is happening, AI can help teams quickly find relevant documents or assets they might need.
- Incident Timeline/Summary in Slack: If you’re using Slack for incident communication, AI can help log key moments and summarize recent updates right there in the channel.
Limitations and benefits of native JSM AI
Putting AI to work within Jira Service Management definitely has some cool benefits, but it’s also smart to know where it might have limits depending on what you need.
The benefits
Using AI in Jira Service Management can really give your team’s performance a shot in the arm and make customers happier. When the virtual agent handles those basic, Tier 1 questions, it takes a load off your agents, letting them focus on the tougher, more valuable conversations. Intelligent triage means tickets get to the right person faster, helping you resolve issues quicker and meet those important SLA goals.
Features like issue summaries and suggested replies give agents quick context and handy tools, helping them be more productive. And for your customers? Getting faster answers and having self-service options usually means they walk away feeling better about their experience. Plus, because JSM plays nicely with other Atlassian tools like Confluence and Jira Software, it helps connect the dots between support, development, and operations teams, making collaboration smoother.
The limitations
While JSM’s built-in AI is powerful, its native features might not cover everything you need, depending on your situation.
- The most advanced stuff, like the virtual agent and intelligent triage, is only available on the Premium and Enterprise plans. This can be a pretty big hurdle if you’re a smaller or mid-sized team on a lower plan.
- The virtual agent mainly learns from your linked knowledge base articles. This means it’s not super easy to train it on things like past tickets or other types of documents unless you put in some manual work or set up something complex.
- You can customize the AI’s tone and how it acts, but it might not be as detailed as you need if you have a very specific brand voice or complicated workflows.
- Testing AI workflows before you launch them might not be as thorough compared to using dedicated AI platforms, which could lead to some unexpected results when it’s live.
Getting set up with JSM AI
Getting started with AI in JSM usually means flipping a few switches in your JSM settings.
- Navigate to “AI agents and automation” or “Atlassian Intelligence” in the Admin Center.
- Enable the desired AI features. Advanced AI tools require purchasing the Advanced AI add-on or being on a Premium/Enterprise plan.
- Point the AI to your knowledge base sources.
- Set up configurations for features like intelligent triage and the virtual agent.
- Configure your automation rules.
Depending on how complex your desired workflows and integrations are, this might take some effort from your admin team to make sure everything is hooked up and configured just right.
JSM AI pricing
Understanding the cost of Jira Service Management AI means looking past the basic plan price. Remember, the AI features most people want are either add-ons or part of the more expensive plans.
JSM comes in a few flavors: Free, Standard, Premium, and Enterprise. While you might get a few basic AI features in the lower tiers (like some help with writing), the core AI Agent features – that’s the virtual agent, intelligent triage, and the advanced incident management AI – are mainly included in the Premium and Enterprise plans.
Here’s a quick look at how the plans stack up regarding AI:
| Plan | Cost (Annual Billing) | Key AI Features Included |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | Limited/Basic AI (e.g., some generative assistance) |
| Standard | $19.04 per agent/month | Limited/Basic AI |
| Premium | $47.82 per agent/month | Full AI Suite (Virtual Agent, Intelligent Triage, Summaries, Suggestions, Alert Grouping, Incident AI, Automation Rules) |
| Enterprise | Custom Pricing | Everything in Premium + Advanced Analytics, Unlimited Automation, Dedicated Support |
Just a heads-up: That cost is per agent, and it’s billed annually.
Any extra costs to watch out for?
Beyond the per-agent cost for Premium or Enterprise, there aren’t really big hidden fees just for using the AI features themselves within those plans. You don’t pay per automated resolution, for example, which is different from some other platforms.
The main cost factor is simply needing to be on a higher-priced plan to get the full AI package. If your team is on the Standard plan and only needs a couple of specific AI features, jumping everyone up to Premium can be a pretty big expense. Also, while JSM connects with lots of tools, some more advanced integrations or custom setups might need apps from the Marketplace, and those usually cost extra.
Making JSM AI even better with external tools (like eesel AI)
Jira Service Management definitely gives you a solid starting point for using AI in your support, but some teams might bump into limitations. Maybe you want more flexibility in training data (like easily using past tickets), need really deep customization for how your bot talks and behaves, or want better ways to test things before going live.
This is where external AI tools and integrations can step in and really boost JSM’s built-in features. By connecting specialized AI platforms to your Jira Service Management setup, you can get more detailed control, use a wider variety of data sources for training, and build more complex automation workflows that fit your specific business needs. These tools aren’t meant to replace JSM; they work with it to help you build a more powerful and flexible AI support system.
How eesel AI can help with JSM AI’s limitations
eesel AI is built to connect smoothly with platforms like Jira Service Management. It offers a flexible and potentially more budget-friendly way to level up your AI support game.
- Pricing that makes sense: eesel AI uses a pay-per-interaction setup instead of charging per agent. This can be more affordable, especially if your team’s ticket volume changes or only a few agents need AI support.
- Train on everything: eesel AI can learn from past tickets, Google Docs, Confluence, PDFs, wikis, and more. It pulls from your full knowledge base, not just linked articles.
- Really make it yours: You can shape how your AI agent speaks and behaves, from greetings to workflows, so it fits your brand and processes perfectly.
- Test drive everything: Run simulations on past tickets, preview answers, and roll out the bot in stages. It’s built for safer, more confident launches.
- It doesn’t just talk, it does things: eesel AI can perform tasks through custom API calls like fetching order details, processing refunds, or updating accounts directly from JSM or other systems.
- Easy to set up: Connecting eesel AI to JSM is quick. Just link your data sources and configure the agent, no complex migrations needed.
JSM AI review summary
Okay, let’s quickly recap the good points and the things to consider about Jira Service Management’s built-in AI features:
| Pros of JSM AI | Cons of JSM AI |
|---|---|
| Fits right into JSM workflows | Advanced features need Premium/Enterprise plan |
| Lots of features (triage, summaries, etc.) | Training mostly limited to knowledge base |
| Helps agents get more done | Less detailed customization for tone/behavior |
| Makes incident response better | Limited testing options before launch |
| Built on a platform you know | Can be complex to set up advanced configurations |
Is JSM AI right for you?
JSM AI has some valuable features for automating support, but you don’t have to feel stuck with just its built-in capabilities or pricing. eesel AI connects with your existing Jira Service Management setup. It gives you flexible, powerful AI automation that can learn from all your knowledge sources, lets you customize things deeply, and scales affordably.
See for yourself how eesel AI can change the game for your Jira Service Management workflows, potentially lower costs, and give your team superpowers. Start a free trial here or book a demo to see it in action!
