Occupational safety incident management software

Solution

Itransition was involved in all the stages of the one-year project. Our team analyzed business requirements, worked out the technical specification, chose the software, developed the solution, and then tested, deployed, and supported it.

We suggested building a custom solution based on Atlassian Jira because the software fits the main functional requirements, such as workplace issue submission and tracking, attachment of images, incident assessments and other documents, task assignment, real-time reporting, and customizable workflows. Given that Jira implementation ensures fast time-to-market even with customizations, the customer approved of our choice. 

Jira customizations

Mirroring the customer’s business processes, we developed custom schemes for issue types, field configurations, permissions, workflows, and notifications. Our team also extended Jira with two plugins that provided for incident and inspection management. Apart from this, we delivered Active Directory (AD) synchronization, single sign-on user authentication specific to the customer’s needs, and an admin panel for managing settings.

As a result, we built a Jira-based incident management system intended for four types of users:

• Field workers registering incidents
• Support team employees processing incidents
• Managers who supervise the progress of issue resolution, gather statistics, monitor trends, and perform occupational safety audits
• System administrators managing user permissions and accounts

An incident management module

When an incident occurs or a dangerous situation is detected in the field, workers take appropriate action to eliminate the hazard. Afterward, they fill in the following incident report in Jira.

The department manager reviews the form and appoints a specialist responsible for troubleshooting. The manager also sets the due date and additional actions to be taken if needed. When the issue is resolved, the responsible person fills in a nonconformance report, demonstrated below, that lists the causes of the incident and measures taken to eliminate the consequences.

To sustain occupational health and safety within the enterprise, the customer’s top managers regularly perform audits. The Jira inspection management plugin we implemented helps them register the results and ensures audit standardization and data systematization. The management team can also generate reports and monitor workplace trends to make informed health and safety decisions.

Account management & SSO

The Itransition team was tasked with separating individual and functional accounts in Jira. The functional accounts are used by employees with a certain job role that can be performed by several people, so that they can handle the same tasks during different work hours. Individual accounts are necessary for reporting to discern who handled certain tasks.

Considering the specifics of individual and functional accounts, our team implemented an unconventional single sign-on (SSO) scheme. Individual accounts are linked to the functional ones through an AD query. Depending on job roles and employee instructions, individual accounts can be linked to more than one functional account. In such cases, the user can choose one main functional account to be automatically authenticated to and change it later on.

The introduction of the AD query account synchronization revealed that up to 15% of employees could not be matched to any functional accounts. To overcome this complication, Itransition’s specialists suggested implementing a semi-automated synchronization system for the individual and functional accounts. 

For this, we saved the established individual-functional accounts’ links in the database. When a user signs in, their individual account is identified through the Kerberos SSO protocol. The database then provides a list of functional accounts available for the user, and if none are identified, they are asked to contact the support team. When there are several functional accounts available, the user is automatically assigned to the first available account and can change it if needed so that all subsequent user logins would be performed under the selected functional account.

When users create or process an issue under a functional account, the system automatically fills in individual account values. This way it is always clear who creates an issue or works on it under a specific functional account.

The system administrators can edit the links between individual and functional accounts. In theory, AD synchronization could make it possible to change the links, but the modifications made by admins have priority over the synced data. Admins can also choose the main functional account for users to be automatically authenticated under and, when needed, log into any user account to help them solve issues.

Results

The Itransition team developed a custom solution based on Atlassian Jira to facilitate end-to-end workplace incident management together with the monitoring and enhancement of occupational health and safety. 

The solution allows the customer to analyze incident root causes and appoint preventive measures wisely, thus mitigating occupational safety-related risks. 

Eventually, the solution’s implementation has yielded the following results:

• Incident investigation, from reporting an issue to closing it, has become 3x faster
• Incident reporting is standardized
• Detailed incident investigation is enhanced with visibility via pictures, documents, notes, and actions taken
• A positive workplace safety and reporting culture is reinforced