Forward Email Notifications

Owned by Noah Griffiths
Last updated: Nov 17, 2023 by Andy Brook [Plugin People]
4 min read

What is a Forward notification

A Forward Notification is an email notification sent by JEMH to Profile > Notification > Forward Users to notify about mail that is not processed successfully and that something went wrong or is wrong with the configuration. Sometimes recovery action is required, sometimes not, but indicates other problems that you as a Jira admin should be aware of.

Why did I get a Forward notification from JEMH

You got a Forward Notification because your email address is listed in JEMH Profile > Notification > Forward Users, and an email wasn’t processed. All Forward users receive these notifications, and such users will typically need to be a JEMH/Jira administrators to take any corrective action.

In most cases, you will need to take action when notified of a Forward Notification because a customers email wasn’t processed with useful outcome (Issue Create / Update) but there some very common No-Action scenarios where, whilst there is no direct action to take in response to this specific Forward, you should be aware of this and understand what it is, as additional steps may be required to reduce/prevent the problems recurring.

Whether or not action is required depends on the reason for Forward. Likely anything that prevents a real customer mail from being processed needs action of some kind.

The JEMH Profile > Message Filters have many default filters that are there to exclude mail from being processed, e.g. to prevent mail loops or generally unwanted email content.

Common Causes and explanations

There are many causes for a mail not be processed, from IO problems beyond JEMH scope to configuration decisions. Many outcomes are controlled by JEMH Message Filters. Below are common causes to help interpret the kind of Forward received:

Folder Closed

A Folder Closed Exception means the mailhost closed the connection on JEMH whilst the mail was being read. This is not a bug in JEMH so please do not raise support queries for this. Mail that is not processed normally like this will be retried. If it continually repeats, see the linked page for more.

Message Removed

A Message Removed Exception means that by the time the current Message was accessed by JEMH the mailhost had received a ‘read/delete’ response from another Jira node/instance. This is not a bug in JEMH so please do not raise support queries for this. Mail that was removed could not be fully read (by the current JEMH process) as such JEMH doesn’t mark the mail ‘read/deleted’ as that already happened, see the linked page for more.

Catch Email Mismatch

JEMH requires a match against the incoming ‘mailbox’ addressee, referred as a Catchemail Address (https://thepluginpeople.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/JEMH/pages/3828383746). If mail is found with no addressee match, it's unexpected, and JEMH will not process it. The default behaviour is to Forward such mail, you can change this in the JEMH Profile > Email > Message Filtering > Non Catchemail Match Action (below) but doing so is not recommended:

  • Leaving the mail in the mailbox means the mail is still read, with a single Profile, the mail will just be repeatedly processed, and ignored.

  • Dropping the mail is not reccommended as potentially customer mail could be lost

The forward notification will either link to the JEMH Auditing entry containing the email, or provide it attached. To prevent this Forward, you would likely need to:

a) Enable it to be processed by adding a Project Mapping addressee Domain Rule or a Profile > Email > Catchemail address.

b) Exclude the mail from being seen by JEMH by filtering it on the mailhost through a Rule.

Risk of Data loss: If no action is taken, customer mail may be lost. JEMH > Auditing > Settings > Inbound auditing > Retention settings controls how long JEMH will keep mail for, you need to act before that time, there is no further recovery.

Precedence: Bulk / Junk / List

Mail containing a “Precedence: ” mail header indicates it comes from an automated/generated source (such as Jira) and is typically blocked by JEMH to prevent mail loops. By default such messages are dropped. JEMH allows per-project Message Filter actions on a range of headers including this one through Profile > Project Mappings > nnn > Email > Message Filter Actions

  • Forward / Allow / Drop [default] / Drop and exit [profile group use]

Enabling “Precedence: bulk” mail will not in itself enable mail loops from a local Jira, there are additional steps, but it opens the door.

Failed to create or comment on an issue

Issues can fail to be created due to:

How to reprocess a failed mail

When Auditing is enabled, the mail will link to the Audit entry, otherwise, a copy of the inbound mail will be attached to the Forwarded Notification.

Folder Closed and Message Removed

In these scenarios JEMH never got the mail so there is no mail to re-run, and no report because the was no processing done yet. See sections above for these outcomes.

since 4.1.29

The forward mail links to an entry in JEMH > Auditing > Incoming Mail. The first thing to look at is the Report (see https://thepluginpeople.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/JEMH/pages/1111523333/Use+Incoming+Mail+Auditing#Report ) that will provide processing details and quite possibly the reason for the processing failure. If you read this and take action, you may be able to solve the processing problem without waiting for our support team!

If the mail was fully received (not subject to Folder Closed or Message Removed) then there are actions to convert this audit mail to a Test Case that retains the link to the related Profile.

Once you have a Test Case, you can make changes in JEMH/Jira and rerun the Test Case to achieve recovery.

Next steps for an attached EML file

The attached email (.eml files are just text) can be imported through JEMH > Test Cases - be sure to pick the correct Profile to associate the Test Case with.

Once you have a Test Case, you can make changes in JEMH/Jira and rerun the Test Case to achieve recovery.