I build small apps for Jira and Confluence. When I was looking for gaps worth fixing, I kept running into the same ticket: JRACLOUD-77500, "Improve the rendering of email files on issue view". It has been open since 2021 and has 247 votes. The problem is simple. Someone attaches an email to a ticket, and Jira shows a wall of text or code instead of the email.
It happens a lot in service desks. A customer forwards an email, someone reports a phishing attempt, or a migration brings years of old Outlook messages along.
Why it happens
A .eml file is the raw text of an email. A .msg file is Outlook's own format. Jira Cloud's preview doesn't show either of them as an email. There is one exception: emails you add with Atlassian's Jira Cloud for Outlook add-in show up under "Attached emails". Files that are uploaded, forwarded or added by automation don't.
Option 1: download it and open it in a mail program
Outlook for Windows opens both formats. Apple Mail and Thunderbird open .eml, but not .msg. It works, but everyone ends up with a copy on their own laptop. And opening a suspicious email in Outlook is exactly what phishing training tells people not to do.
Option 2: change how emails get in
Renaming .msg to .eml doesn't work, the formats are different. Saving the email as a PDF before attaching it does work, if you can get everyone to do that. If your team lives in Outlook, the Outlook add-in is worth setting up.
Option 3: an app that shows the email on the ticket
If you go this way, check a few things. Does it run inside Atlassian, or does it send your emails to its own servers? Does it read both .msg and .eml? Does it also handle forwarded emails that arrive without a file extension? And does it work in the agent view of Jira Service Management?
Disclosure: I built MailView (Dortus), one of those apps. It shows up by itself on tickets that have an email attached. You see the email the way it was sent, with the text, images and attachments, and earlier replies folded away. It runs on Atlassian and only reads, so your emails stay in your Jira. For suspicious emails it also gives a short verdict in normal words, like a sender domain with lookalike letters or a link that goes somewhere else than it says.
https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/4078695191
If you solved this another way, I'd like to hear how in the comments.
