Forms vs Checklists

Atlassian recently made the forms available in Jira Service Management cloud projects. You can create forms that can be used either internally on the Jira issue, or externally on the JSM portal.  The forms can include multiple field types, including a checkboxes.

So when should you use a form and when should you use a checklist?

Forms and checklists are both powerful tools that can make your service agents more efficient, and your customers more satisfied.  While some of their functionality overlaps, there are distinct ways you’ll want to use them in your Service projects.

When to Use a Form

Forms are a great way to collect and share detailed, structured information.  You don’t have to create custom fields for the form fields, so it helps keeps your Jira instance light and features like validation and conditional logic allow you to create forms that are both thorough in the information they collect, and simple and intuitive for users to complete. Use forms on the JSM portal to collect the specific information you need for a given request type. A well-designed form will often mean that agents can provide one-touch service.

When to Use a Checklist

While forms are excellent for gathering information from JSM customers, checklists are a great way to track the steps of your internal processes. Use a checklists to ensure you have provided customers with all off the required information, to document the steps needed to recreate a bug, or to track your internal QA testing before a fix is provided to the customer.

Forms vs Checklists

A few ways other ways that checklists differ from forms:

• Forms are created in advanced and then added to the request/issue to be filled out by customers or agents. Checklists can be created or modified ad-hoc, no advance preparation necessary.
• Administer Projects permission is required to create forms. Anyone with permission to edit the issue can add/edit a checklist.
• You can use @ mentions to assign checklist items to a user. Currently there is no way to assign a form (or form field) to a specific user.
• Forms can be published to the portal for a customer to fill out, or in a read-only state to allow the agent to share information with the customer.  Checklists can be displayed in a read-only state on the JSM portal. Checklists cannot be created or  completed by JSM customers.

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