Streamline Your Processes with Journeys in Atlassian Jira

Friday, July 18, 2025
by Palak Chauhan

How to Enable and Configure Journeys in Jira Service Management Cloud

1. What is “Journey” in Jira Service Management? 

"Journeys" let admins create end-to-end processes that link work items (issues) across multiple projects, offering a centralized map of a workflow—from trigger to completion—across teams

2. How to Turn On Journeys

Journeys are available via the Feature Lab:

  1. Go to Project settings → Features.

  2. Locate and toggle it on to enable experimental preview.

  3. Once enabled, the Journeys section appears in the sidebar where you can .

3. Creating and Activating a Journey

  • Draft mode: Begin building your workflow. Add triggers, work items, field assignments, dependencies, and automation rules. Everything is auto-saved.

  • Publish: Once validated (no missing fields, loops, etc.), you can publish—moving the journey from draft to .

4. Key Features of Journeys

  • Multi-project visibility: Map tasks across JSM, ITSM, HR, finance, etc.

  • Triggers: Journeys auto-start based on specific triggers (e.g. issue creation).

  • Dependencies & automation: Include pauses, automatic field updates or transitions.

  • Field mapping: Pre-populate linked issues with data from the initiating ticket.

  • Lifecycle states: Manage drafts, active published journeys, and archive old ones.

5. Advantages of Using Journeys

  • Improved process clarity: Visualize inter-team workflows end-to-end.

  • Efficiency gains: Automation reduces repetitive manual tasks.

  • Better control: Manage cross-project dependencies and compliance checklists.

  • Enhanced collaboration: Clear ownership & status visibility across departments.

  • Increased on-time delivery: Triggered stages and SLAs keep processes on track.

6. When to Use Journeys

  • Onboarding/offboarding: HR, IT, facility, security tasks spanning teams.

  • Complex services: Rollouts needing coordination with Ops, Dev, Compliance.

  • Cross-team handoffs: Escalations, multi-stage approvals, incident responses.

7. Tips & Best Practices

  • Use draft state to collaborate and refine before publishing.

  • Clearly define triggers and conditions to avoid duplicate journeys.

  • Utilize dependencies and wait to ensure teams complete their work before the next phase.

  • Use field population maps to avoid redundant data entries.

  • Archive outdated journeys to maintain clarity.

Example Journey Steps

  1. Trigger: IT onboarding ticket is created.

  2. Create linked issues in HR, Facilities, Security.

  3. Map key fields (start date, employee name) to child issues.

  4. Add dependency: HR must complete before Security starts badge provisioning.

  5. Automation: Notify managers when tasks are done.

  6. SLA triggers or escalations if overdue.

9. Conclusion

Journeys are a powerful, flexible tool in Jira Service Management that visualizes and automates multi-team workflows. With minimal setup—just enabling in Feature Lab and defining your flow—they bring clarity, speed, and consistency to complex processes.