How the World’s Leading Gaming Company Delivers a Superior Employee Experience with Troopr
About the company
American game development company primarily focuses on mobile and social networking platforms. The company has grown rapidly over last 13 years, achieving innumerable milestones, and connecting the world through games. Their journey towards conversational project management and ticketing with Troopr is one of the many initiatives they took to deliver the best experience to their teams. It is an innovative organization that has been recognized for being a progressive and sustainable enterprise.
Employees: 5000+
Softwares used: On Premise Jira Service Desk, Jira Software, Confluence, Slack
Number of Slack workspaces: 17
Solution used: Troopr's Slack bot for Jira
The Challenge
Lost productivity switching between Slack and Jira
The Gaming company has successfully adopted Slack for enterprise wide collaboration across all teams. The employees were more comfortable interacting and collaborating in Slack. While engagement is very high in Slack, people found it frustrating to have to keep switching context between Slack and Jira.
Be it for capturing user tickets reported in DM channels or looking up the status of a Jira project under discussion or referring to status of Jira issues mentioned in a daily standup meeting report.
The team was actively looking for a solution that will help them easily manage Jira in Slack. The official Slack integration for Jira did not cut it as it did not work for anything more than basic issue notifications and actions. The other key considerations include for the solution to
-
Work seamlessly when they choose to migrate from Server to Cloud
-
Work seamlessly across all workspaces in the Slack Grid
-
Support any and every customization to Jira Software and Service Desk
The Solution
Unified interface for Jira products in Slack
The team wanted a single platform that could help them knock off these challenges. Integrating Jira products with Slack Grid provided seamless user experience across member workspaces. Troopr Slack Grid support features "external user discovery", allowing external users from other workspaces in the Slack Grid to interact with Troopr seamlessly in shared channels. Also Troopr's Grid replication feature allows users to connect to their Jira account once and action on Jira issues from any of the workspaces in the Grid.
Also Troopr provided unified interface with the flexibility and configurability they needed for their team workflows. Troopr comes with a comprehensive Slack integration for both Jira Service Desk and Jira Software that easily plugs into Slack Grid and provides an intuitive interface for users that requires no training or learning curve.
Troopr also backed up the superior product offering with an enterprise grade security commitment to the fullest satisfaction of the security team. That and 24/7 support via email, chat, Slack and helpdesk channels for continuous premium support needs of the team.
Challenge 1
Jira tickets falling off the cracks
Problem
A workforce of over 5000+ employees meant 9 different helpdesks manned by dedicated support teams to handle requests from employees within the organization . IT support requests included requests for software license s, network issues, software issues, hardware provisioning requests and more.
The company has a setup Jira customer portal for IT support. Employees can login to the portal and pick the relevant helpdesk and request type to report issues. Each helpdesk also has a dedicated support channel in Slack where employees can report issues. In reality many of the requests were posted directly to the agents in their DM channels in Slack.
Agents end up manually copy pasting Slack conversations to create corresponding Jira tickets. This took a considerable amount of time for the support agents in the context switch and manual work in repeated copy pasting between Slack and Jira, taking away valuable time that could otherwise be used on strategic tasks and decision making.
Solution
With the introduction of Troopr, support teams are able to handle incoming requests in Slack efficiently. Each Slack support channel is mapped to corresponding JSM helpdesk project. Troopr automatically creates new Jira tickets for every request posted in the channels and keeps all updates in sync between Slack and Jira. Employees get to keep the convenience of posting requests in Slack and agents dont have to copy paste anymore.
Agents also have a dedicated triage channel setup that will track all new tickets created via Slack or otherwise. This allows them a private space to discuss and update tickets in Slack while Troopr takes care of syncing them into Jira and notifying the customer.
Agents also setup Troopr smart alerts that trigger on important events like tickets nearing SLA deadlines so they can proactively take action before it is too late. Managers also get insights and visibility into how the team is managing requests, directly in Slack.
Challenge 2
Teams struggling to keep Jira projects current
Problem
Jira is generally perceived as complex and time consuming by most of the employees. The number of custom fields, issue types, boards, screens and workflow configured in a typical Jira project add to the complexity and frustration.
Also the sub-optimal UX also adds to this when users have to click too many buttons/links to complete simple frequent actions.
The engineering teams were struggling to keep the Jira projects current because of the general hatred to switch context from work to update Jira regularly.
The project stakeholders were not able to get the real picture of what’s going on as Jira was not current, and required a lot of manual nudging and shoulder taps to get everyone to update Jira regularly. This is neither desirable nor scalable.
Solution
Integrating Jira to Slack means automating frequent actions into micro-interactions that can be performed in a fraction of time taken in Slack. Simple example could be updating the status of an issue. The users no longer have to wait for a web page to load and search for the specific issue they want to update and then perform the action.
The issue that needs the users’ attention comes to them in an actionable compact message format in Slack and all that is required is usually for the users to push a button.
The real game-changer is better engagement in the team resulting in Jira being current more often. At this point it is a win win for the team members and management.
Challenge 3
Keeping stakeholders outside Jira on same page
Problem
The stakeholders outside Jira found it difficult to access relevant Jira progress information and reports on time. Manually asking for every single information or report meant higher turnaround time.
Solution
With Jira project status reports in Slack, everyone gets to see the status report on time and everyone is on the same page. With Troopr, the company was able to bring 20+ project reports in Slack. Some examples of these types of reports include issues by status, burndown chart, a text summary report of the open issues, and more.
Challenge 4
Challenges in facilitating remote team meetings
Problem
The employees at the company were distributed across different time zones and were facing challenges finding a suitable time for the team ceremonies. Oftentimes, some team members couldn't make it to the meetings.
Besides being bound by time zones, there was another significant challenge. When the team gets on video calls answering Daily Scrum or Retro questions, there is often not enough time for the team to give thoughts to each other’s responses and build on it with creative suggestions. It is also not the best use of everybody’s time when there are more than a few participants.
Also the entire process was manual and required one person to coordinate the meeting logistics, take notes during the meeting and follow up with the participants on the action items post the meeting. This was both a tedious and error prone process.
Solution
Troopr check-ins provide a set of industry proven templates for team ceremonies. The teams can set up Troopr to configure and send the meeting questions to the team members at a particular time (say 10.00 am) in their own local time-zone.
Everyone could type their responses at a comfortable time during their day. If someone fails to remember to update their response within the time-boxed schedule, Troopr sends them a notification reminder, encouraging them to contribute.
Then, Troopr automatically aggregates these responses into beautiful reports shared in a common Slack channel and in a shared web portal. And the project managers/ Product Owners could view the entire report at a comfortable timing in Slack without context switching.
Challenge 5
Collaborating seamlessly across Slack Grid teams
Problem
The company uses Enterprise Slack Grid that connects 15+ workspaces across the organization.
And every unique business unit was interacting and collaborating in their dedicated workspaces, introducing challenges in cross-team communication and collaboration. Most employees were present in more than one workspace and collaboration across workspaces happened via shared channels.
Every employees needs to get seamless access to Jira project information irrespective of the workspace context.
Solution
Troopr integrates Jira with workspaces across the Slack Grid seamlessly. Troopr Slack Grid support comes with many unique features that enable the seamless experience for users across Grid workspaces.
Troopr recognizes the users irrespective of the workspace context. External members in shared channels are also recognized based on their shared profile in the Enterprise Grid.
Also, deep Jira integration enabled sharing project related information, updates and reports in shared channels across workspaces that were convenient and delivered friction free experience to the users.
The lasting impact of Troopr
Troopr started showing encouraging results right from the onset. The employees were able to use the bot without any training and started making use of it soon after the launch of Troopr. The bot helped the teams enhance the experience of their existing employees but also helped in the smooth onboarding of their new employees. The senior management reported a significant reduction in employee time spent on context switching to access Jira. The teams are more in sync that resulted in better employee workplace experience.
Troopr team provides 24/7 support via chat, email, help desk portal and a dedicated Slack channel for enterprise customers.
Saves Time
Saves upto 100 hours per employee time per year
Maximizes ROI
Maximizes ROI on Jira Investment
Cuts Costs
Averages $6M savings for 1000 member team.
Upgrades Experience
Upgrades employee workplace experience