Jira Service Desk - Full-Email Interaction

Question

Hello there!

I'm new to the Atlassian eco-system and I am starting using Jira Service Desk for tracking support requests.

As of now, the communication between our Service Desk and  and customers is currently managed ONLY via email: I would like to use Jira Service Desk only to 'silently' track all the communications, update SLAs and create reports. I have a couple of questions:

1. How do I ensure that any activity performed by an agent on Jira Service Desk will result in sending an email to a customer?

2. Currently, I have enabled the creation of new requests from email (as described here: https://confluence.atlassian.com/servicedeskserver032/receiving-requests-by-email-828800649.html?_ga=2.184369318.1884134358.1553438516-1059549463.1546631455). Issues are properly created in the Service Desk Project. If an agent replies from her/his email, the issue is properly updated. If a customer replies from her/his email, Jira Service Desk creates a new issue. Can Jira Service Desk be configured to always append new comments to the already created issues? How?

Update on question #2: I just verified that Jira is configured not to create new users from emails. Can this be the explanation for question #2? If a user is created in Jira, can I still ensure question #1?

Thanks in advance for any advice!

Former user · Answer

Sorry I can't help you any further. The Add-on is private and under ongoing development, so I can't share any details.

Andrea Gallo · Answer

Hello Sven,

thanks a lot for your answers! A couple of follow-ups:

1. I disabled all the notification under Project Settings > Customer notifications. Also, for now, I disabled all the outgoing email from the Global Jira Configuration.

2. All the incoming emails should contain a 8-digits number that can be used as issue key. This number should be always available in the email subject (but its position may vary, since you may have the usual "Re:" or "Fw:" tokens when you manage tickets by email). Is there anything that I have to configure in Jira Service Desk to instruct the email handler on how to find the issue key in the subject?

If I have to develop a private add-on, is there any reference that you may share with me to start from?

Thanks again!

Former user · Answer

1. You can customize service desk notifactions.

2. Jira needs to know what Issue it should append the email to as a comment. Therefore there must be an issue key somewhere in the email. If that's not feasible for you, you could write a more complex/smart incoming mail handler yourself.

Not sure if there is a way to solve this with standard Jira/ServiceDesk functionality. We had a similiar use case and developed a private Add-On to solve these kind of problems.