SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 26, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Zendesk, the proven cloud-based help desk software provider, today announced an out-of-the-box integration with Atlassian's JIRA OnDemand, part of Atlassian's new cloud-based offering. JIRA is the leading issue, bug, and project-tracking tool for software development teams. The two-way Zendesk for JIRA integration means support agents and developers can easily collaborate, edit, update or resolve a ticket from within Zendesk or JIRA. A new widget in Zendesk keeps agents updated on a JIRA ticket's status, assignee, and issue key in real-time.

The integration improves the relationship between customer support and engineering by getting customer support agents and developers on the same page. Zendesk for JIRA OnDemand makes it easy for agents to transfer tickets to developers, and vice-versa, without constantly switching software or accounts. Critical details about a support request can now be seamlessly shared and offer a more holistic, transparent view of a support request.

Support agents can share tickets with developers associated with a project and select the type of issue or link it to an existing issue. Developers will see the ticket in their activity stream and see the details of the bug.

Both Zendesk and Atlassian are founding members of the Networked Help Desk initiative, an open standard to create a seamless communication stream among multiple partners and suppliers to deliver an awesome customer experience. Networked Help Desk's ticket-sharing API lets companies collaborate and share help desk tickets, regardless of the software they use. The initiative was established in June 2011 to create products that enable organizations to deliver superior customer service and has already grown to 53 members.

"This integration marks the first official Networked Help Desk integration," said Zendesk COO, Zack Urlocker. "With Atlassian's new OnDemand offering, it no longer matters where JIRA is hosted. Development and support teams can work together in an emboldened and powerful way."

"The JIRA/Zendesk integration gives customers a simple way to pass help desk tickets straight from their customers to their development teams using the combined power of JIRA and Zendesk to support all groups involved," said Jay Simons, president at Atlassian. "Zendesk is leading the charge in the help desk and customer service arena, and our partnership, and the strength of our combined offering, is going to make lots of happy customers."

"Integrating Zendesk with JIRA ensures that our clients get an immediate, branded, and formal response to their requests, and anything that needs to be dealt with on the developer side can be pushed across to JIRA in seconds," said Andy Fleming, founding director of Halogenics, a software and consulting company providing database solutions for the biomedical research and education sectors.  "Our customer interactions look more professional than an ad-hoc email, while workflows are better streamlined. Best of all, we don't waste our small team's valuable time punching tickets into two different systems."

About Zendesk

Zendesk is the leading provider of proven, cloud-based help desk software. For growing organizations, Zendesk is the fastest way to enable great customer service. More than 10,000 Zendesk customers, including Adobe, MSNBC, Sony, OpenTable and Groupon, trust Zendesk with their most valuable assets: their customers, partners, and employees. Founded in 2007, Zendesk is funded by Charles River Ventures, Benchmark Capital and Matrix Partners. Learn more at www.zendesk.com.

SOURCE Zendesk