Jira Workflow Toolbox by Decadis
In the vast universe of workspace galaxies, onboarding new crew members efficiently is paramount. No commander wants their newest astronaut spending their initial orbits just floating around, waiting for the necessary clearance to fully engage with their tasks. But this process is often tangled in a web of manual tasks spread across multiple departments, leading to slow progress, data entry mishaps, and inconsistencies.
This challenge was all too familiar to FES - Germany's oldest political foundation, which champions pluralistic social dialogue through research, events, and education. This foundation faces a steady stream of new researchers, working students, and academics requiring a streamlined and efficient onboarding procedure to their mission.
Where it began: Excel-like spreadsheet without business logic
The starting point was an internally developed solution based on Oracle Forms, which could best be compared to a simple spreadsheet without any actual business logic. This came with significant limitations, like missing a proper workflow, task assignment and ownership, proper field or process validation, notifications, etc.
"We knew that our onboarding process was simply no longer up to date. We were looking for a solution that would allow us to standardize the process in-house and automate it as much as possible to avoid potential sources of mistakes." – Martin Herkenrath, IT Project Manager from FES.
Their search for a solution quickly led them to Jira, which already covered many of the aspects they were looking for, like an underlying workflow, assignment of responsibilities, or notifications of changes.
However, while Jira offers some rudimentary options to extend workflows, these were not enough to automate the process as far as they wished. Therefore, they decided to use the Jira Workflow Toolbox (JWT), which offers almost unlimited possibilities for workflow automation with flexible conditions, validators and post-functions.
But what exactly does the solution look like?
In general, a new employee is represented by a Jira issue following a highly automated Jira workflow.
The first improvement was using JWT right at the issue creation to significantly improve data quality with several checks on the data points collected and entered by the HR department and creating a standardized summary based on that data.
The HR department then forwards the issue to the business department for further processing which is notified by email. They enter all the relevant information - like which devices and accesses the new employee will need - and move the issue along.
As the second big improvement, various issues are then automatically created for Facility Management, IT, and other departments based on the new issue information. But that’s not all - some of these automated tasks are dependent on each other - e.g. most of the IT department's tasks first require the internal directory account name to be set.
But what exactly does the solution look like?
These dependencies are built into the workflow and the assignees of the dependent issues are notified when they can proceed. In addition, once all those additional issues have been completed, the initial onboarding issue they originated from is automatically completed.
All of these improvements - from data quality checks and improvements to automatic issue creation and dependency tracking were implemented with Jira Workflow Toolbox. Automating as many of the repetitive tasks as possible ensures that input mistakes are minimized, data consistency is guaranteed, and manual work is reduced to a minimum.
Mapping a complex process like this would not have been possible without an additional automation tool in Jira.
Hyperdriving Automation with the Jira Workflow Toolbox
The feedback from management and users on using Jira with the Jira Workflow Toolbox has been consistently positive, and FES is impressed with the increased productivity in the registration process.
This success has encouraged FES to bring even more other departments onto Jira and map other personnel and business processes such as master data changes with Jira Workflow Toolbox, utilizing the flexibility and high degree of automation to their advantage.
It clearly demonstrates the power of Jira and JWT in navigating the complex cosmos of organizational processes.