How can I prevent duplicate tickets when customers reply to an existing email request?

Question

Whenever a client sends an email to our Atlassian service desk address (e.g., @yourcompany.atlassian.net), a new ticket is correctly created. However, when someone replies to that same email thread, Jira Service Management creates a new ticket instead of adding the response to the original request.

Is there a way to ensure that replies are added to the existing ticket rather than creating a new one? Any guidance would be greatly appreciated!

Matteo Vecchiato · Accepted Answer

Hi @Andres Zamora ,

Welcome to Atlassian community and thank you for your question.

The replies of an existent ticket is a out-of-the-box feature, it is a standard behaviour of JSM, like stated here https://support.atlassian.com/jira/kb/set-up-jsm-mail-handler-to-allow-comments-on-existing-work-items-but-prevent-creating-new-ones/

If in the email is present the work item key, a comment must be added to the existent work item.

I guess it is duplicating caused by permissions, like the users that are replying don't have access to the ticket (in Jira) or they have the add comment permission.

Try to check the Email channels logs to understand better from the following url:
https://<yoursite>.atlassian.net/jira/settings/products/jira-service-management-email-requests

Hope it helps

Trudy P Claspill · Accepted Answer

Hello @Andres Zamora

I want to check that I understand your scenario.

User A sends an email to your JSM address. They also add User B to the To or CC fields of the email.

User B replies to the original email, with their response being sent to the JSM address and the original sender of the email (and any other users in the original To and CC fields).

As a result you get a duplicate issue created in JSM.

If I have understood correctly, then I think you will the information in this article helpful:

Resolve Duplicate Ticket Creation from Email Replies in JSM Cloud

Beyond the information in that article, you would need to set up an Automation Rule to look at issues newly created through Email, check if there is an existing issue with the same subject/summary, and then determine if the new issue should actually be a comment on the first issue. If it should, then the automation could copy the Description of the new issue to a Comment on the first, and then transition the new issues to done/closed.