How to prevent email address linking in a ticket description?

[Andrew Coutermarsh]

I'm using Jira Automation to create a ticket in another space and project, after the current one is closed. Basic gist of it is that when we have a ticket created for a new account, I need to send another ticket over to a queue that does something else with those accounts after they're created.

The request from the dev team is simple: Create a description that has the user's name, email address, and manager, in YAML format. I'm using the API to create the ticket, because it's in a different space, and it works great, except for the fact that it's formatting the email address, and the result looks like this:

Name: Test Testuser
Email: [ttestuser@domain.com|mailto:ttestuser@domain.com]
Starting Date: 13/04/2026
Hiring Manager: Manager Name

The applicable piece of the API POST:

"description": {
  "content": [
    {
      "content": [
        {
          "text": "{{#jsonEncode}}Name: {{newHireInfo.Name}}\n
Email: {{newHireInfo.Email}}\n
Starting Date: {{newHireInfo.StartDate}}\n
Hiring Manager: {{newHireInfo.Manager}}{{/jsonEncode}}",
          "type": "text"
        }
      ],
      "type": "paragraph"
    }
  ],
  "type": "doc",
  "version": 1
},

How can I format this in such a way that it doesn't try to add a mailto link when the ticket is submitted? I assume I could try adding a {noformat} to it, but I'm worried this may affect their ability to automatically process the ticket.

EDIT: I seem to have forgotten to mention that I already validated all of these fields and the email address field itself is JUST the email address, not [ttestuser@domain.com|mailto:ttestuser@domain.com].

{{newHireInfo.Email}} = "ttestuser@domain.com", period, end of story. The formatting is being added at the time of ticket creation (or comment creation, in the case of my testing by posting the data into comments).

On some further research, it appears that this is the result of Smart Linking, and I'm not sure if there's a way to prevent it.

[Andrew Coutermarsh · Accepted solution]

Oh, I am an absolute idiot. I did this to myself: when I pasted the test data I was using into the comments, Jira auto-linked the email address—and every instance of the automation running from there on in was just copying the formatted email address and sending it on to the other comments and tickets, and I just hadn't realized it.

So long story short, it WAS doing what it should have been doing, it was just using junk input. I should have realized; I just thought Jira was being too smart for its own good.

[John Funk]

Glad you were able to solve it!

[Bill Sheboy]

Hi @Andrew Coutermarsh 

Based upon your response to the questions from @John Funk you appear to need to use the REST API to create the work item in the other site...and you are already using Atlassian Document Format (ADF) as a text node to add the information.

A couple of things to try as a prevention for the smart linking:

• Add the text function at the end of the email address to force it to plain text before it is inserted in the JSON expression.  For example: {{newHireInfo.Email.text}}
• Use a format other than text in the ADF, such as a code node

Kind regards,
Bill

[John Funk]

Hi Andrew - Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

You don't have to use the API to create the ticket in a different space - if you mean space in the same Jira instance. If it is going to a space in another Jira instance, then yes to the API. 

And the smart value (JSON) syntax for the field should be: {{newHireInfo.emailAddress}} (case is important by the way).

[Andrew Coutermarsh]

I don't mean space as in another project, I mean space as in a Jira instance for one of our subsidiary companies, so different instance altogether, but within our cloud instance. So, uh, workspace, I guess?

{{newHireInfo}} is a lookup table I've generated, with the fields Name, Email, StartDate, and Manager. All of the case is already correct—I've validated all of this in comments in the test ticket.

But the comments ARE also formatting the email as a mailto link as well, so the behavior is consistent between the posting of the comment and the generation of the description.

What I DON'T understand is that this rule is a copy of a previous rule, using the same JSON from that rule. The previous rule had some additional whitespace that I cleaned up in my rule (think, like, {{Email.trim()}}, but that's the only difference! And the old rule did NOT cause this formatting problem.

So I guess this just seems to be a Jira thing where it defaults to formatting an email address into a clickable link—I just want it to NOT do that. Am I just going to have to put it all in a {noformat} tag?

[Andrew Coutermarsh]

Oh, one other thing I feel I should mention: when I say that it's formatting the text as below, I mean LITERALLY as below:

Name: Test Testuser
Email: [ttestuser@domain.com|mailto:ttestuser@domain.com]
Starting Date: 13/04/2026
Hiring Manager: Manager Name

Like if I look at the ticket I created, it does NOT have a LINK to the email address (as in a blue, clickable link), it's the exact plaintext above. It's so strange.

[Andrew Coutermarsh]

I think I owe an apology to you and to @Mohamed Benziane, because I just triple-checked and I must not have logged and checked the results after I created the lookup table. It was not doing this before, but this is what's showing now when I log the value of {{newHireInfo.Email}}:

Now I have to figure out why it's auto-formatting THAT instead. Sigh. All this could have been fixed yesterday if I'd only realized. :(

[Ignacio Vera]

Hi @Andrew Coutermarsh 

Try using a codeBlock node instead of paragraph in your ADF, with language set to yaml. That prevents Jira from applying Smart Linking to the email. Something like this:

description:
type: doc
version: 1
content:
- type: codeBlock
attrs:
language: yaml
content:
- type: text
text: |
Name: {{newHireInfo.Name}}
Email: {{newHireInfo.Email}}
Starting Date: {{newHireInfo.StartDate}}
Hiring Manager: {{newHireInfo.Manager}}

[Mohamed Benziane]

Hi,

Can you log the value of {{newHireInfo.Email}} to see how the value look like before the jsonEncode function.

Can you also share a screenshoot of your rule ?

[Andrew Coutermarsh]

The rule is too complex to screenshot. But to answer your question: yes, I've logged all of the fields I've been trying to post, and the basic answer is that it's all correct. The email address is part of a lookup table I've created, and I logged both in the rule and as a comment for each time I ran the test, so I could see the output without having to actually create a new ticket. The comments are also modifying the email address into a clickable link, for what it's worth.