How do I automatically add email replies as comments, when tickets are imported from another system

Question

We are moving to Jira Service Desk from Sugar and will be importing any open tickets into our new Service desk projects.

When customers reply to the Sugar tickets, sugar knows they are replies in the same way that Jira does - primarily because they have a key in the email subject, e.g. [SUGAR-1234]

When we cut over to Jira and import the tickets they will get new Issue Keys (e.g. JIRA-5678). At go-live, customers will still have emails in their inboxes from Sugar that don't have the new Jira Issue Key in them. When they reply to an email with "Subject: SUGAR-1234" it will go to our support email account (now monitored by Jira Service Desk) and Jira will think it is a new ticket because it can't find JIRA-5678 in the subject.

Jira won't let me import the issuekey as SUGAR-1234.

Is there any way of getting Jira to search for either JIRA-5678 OR SUGAR-1234 in email subjects?

This must be a common problem but I can't find any articles about it. Has anyone else worked round this in other ways?

Thanks in advance!

Steve H_fd7ujn · Answer

Hi @Ravi Sagar _Sparxsys_ I've been looking at the ScriptRunner solution for installing a mail handler but I'm not able to work out how this mail handler (at the Jira root level) will interact with the other mail handlers that work with each service desk.

Portal1 has a mailbox of portal1support@ set up in project settings

Portal2 has a mailbox of portal2support@ set up in project settings

These work just fine at the moment. If I then set up a mail handler for scriptrunner in

Jira Administration Settings > System→Incoming Mail→Add Incoming Mail Handler

And set it to monitor the mailbox of portal1support@, aren't the Scriptrunner and Service Desk mail handlers going to fight over the same messages?

Steve H_fd7ujn · Answer

Thanks @Ravi Sagar _Sparxsys_ looks like good advice - will check these out and update the thread with how i got on.

Ravi Sagar _Sparxsys_ · Answer

Hi @Steve H

Before importing issues in JSD store the old issue key (SUGAR-1234) in a custom field and then you will have to use a custom mail handler app like JEMH. So if any mail coming with old issue keys can be searched internally before creating a new issue.

ScriptRunner for Jira can potentially do that as well. Here is an example, I think it can be modified a bit further to search for existing issue key in a custom field.

I hope it helps.