JIRA as an email support system

Owned by Andy Brook [Plugin People] (Unlicensed)
Last updated: May 18, 2012Version comment
3 min read

work in progress, specific to 1.2+

Scenario - Simple Case

You want to support remote users through JIRA but don't want to have to create JIRA accounts for them, perhaps because contact will only be short lived. You want to involve the user with discussions and have then receive comments from issues. You want those users to be able to reply to those emails have have that end up in JIRA.

JIRA setup

  1. Create an unlimited TEXT Custom Field e.g. 'non-jira-participants' to hold the CSV email addresses.

Inbound processing Configuration

The following configuration will setup a project and route all mail to the default project. The sender, if non-jira will have their email address stored in the nominated Custom Field.

  1. Create a JEMH Profile

    • set a fallback project (Project section)

    • set a fallback reporter (User section)

    • set Sender address Processing (Email section), set Assign non jira-users email to Text CustomField to be non-jira-participants

    • Optionally, to notify a wider range of non-jira-users, set the CC address Processing 'toCustomField' and 'CC Handling, Text CustomField for non-JIRA Users' to non-jira-participants

  2. Ensure that the fallback reporter has appropriate permissions in the fallback project.

  3. Create a Test Case email, associated with this Profile, and ensure issues are created, and that the Custom Field has the from: email address from the test case, whatever it was set to.

  4. Verify your JIRA inbound JEMH mail handler uses this Profile.

Email loop considerations

Set a valid Catch email address in the Email section that matches your mailbox, ensuring that that address is not considered as a 'non-jira' notification recipient.

Outbound processing Configuration

In order to generate emails for non-jira users, custom templates need to be setup.

  1. Go to TemplateSets and add a specific template for each of the following:

    • Issue Created

    • Issue Commented

    • Issue Resolved

  2. To show that the custom templates have been used, edit each in turn adding 'CUSTOM' to the subject and text/html body as applicable. NOTE: Styled editors can go full screen if required.

  3. Enable the JEMH Issue Listener

  4. Create a Project specific configuration for your target project (as knowledge of the Profile used to create the issues is not available)

  5. Select text/html format for notifications, as user preferences don't exist.

  6. If no 'global' Custom Field is nominated in the Event Listener Configuration, then it must be provided here, namely non-jira-participants

  7. Select the following events for which outbound notification is to occur, Created cannot be used due to an architectural issue in JEMH () to be addressed at some point, a work-around for this is given next:

    • Commented

    • Resolved

  8. To get Issue Created events that JEMH actually triggers rather than JIRA, back in the Email section:

    • Set the Issue Created TemplateSet to be the appropriate one just created.

  9. In the Notification section, the final piece of the puzzle:

    • Set 'Notify Users on Issue creation' to be Non-JIRA.

Send a mail

  1. Send an email from an unregistered JIRA account. The non-jira email account should get the custom issue created event notification

  2. Comment in JIRA on the issue that was created. The non-jira email account should get the comment event notification, and same for resolution.

You are done.

Please also see JEMH-727, which logs an improvement that could be made, votes please.