Email Request | Ticket Creation | One-to-many conversation

Ayush_6n4yo0

Hi,

Once a ticket is raised using Email Request and some people are also added in CC then,

When the requester replies on the same thread (On Gmail)using the email id he used for creating ticket then those conversation are adding under the same ticket on JIRA.

But, when the person in the CC is replying to the same thread(On Gmail) then a new ticket is getting created on JIRA.

This will create confusion in the long run. As, multiple tickets will be generated having the same issue.

Kindly suggest any resolution to this.

Andy Heinzer

Hi Ayush,

I understand that you're using Jira Service Desk Server and that you have encountered a problem where some users are replying to an email chain; in turn you are wanting Service Desk to add those replies to an existing request, but instead it is creating new requests.

This happens because Service Desk is not yet aware that these individuals should have access to this request.  It tends to happen when a user creates a first email that has several to or cc recipients including one of which is the Service Desk mailbox.   When Service Desk gets that message, it will typically create this new issue, set the sender as the reporter, and then add all the to/cc addresses as request participants.  This Service Desk field that can be seen on the issue is the way that Service Desk is then able to grant other users access to this request.  Since by default Service Desk has a considerably higher privacy settings than say a Jira Core or Jira Software project does, it's necessary to make sure that Jira is aware of all the users that should have access to view/update this request.

What I see happens is that someone forwards that original email and then a new person replies to everyone else.  If Service Desk is setup to allow anyone to create their own account, the expected behavior is as you described where a new request is created because at the time that message is processed that specific user does not have access to the issue since they are not in the request participant field.

The way I would suggest to try to avoid this problem requires some behavior modification of the users themselves.  Instead of sending a mass email to a number of users including Jira's mailbox, I find it can help to first create the issue in Jira Service Desk instead.  When you get an email notification from Jira that this request has been created, you can then reply to that specific message and then include all the addresses you want in the CC field.  When Service Desk gets this request from the reporter/sender, the default behavior is to add all those users as request participants.  This grants those users the access needed to see and update the request, but in turn will prevent them from creating their own requests by the same title when they reply to the message.

The tricky part can be making sure that new users that get this email later on are getting added to this Service Desk request before attempting to reply to this email conversation.  Service Desk cannot be aware of additional users added to an email thread if Jira doesn't get that message as well.  Certainly Service Desk agents can add new users to a request, and depending on the project settings, the reporter or other existing participants can do this as well in the customer portal directly as well. 

Could you also please let me know what version of Service Desk you have?  I ask because some versions handled this scenario slightly differently in the past.

Thanks

Andy