Forwarding an email from one project to another, then creating a JSD ticket in the forwarded project

Question

JIRA version : 7.8.4

JSD version : 3.11.4

Description of issue:

We have a JSD project with an email address associated with it (project_email) that the customers use to send in support requests for that project.  We also have an emergency JSD project that uses it's own email address (emergency_email),  this project is used so that our 24 hour on-call team can be notified immediately via a pager (using pagerduty) when a ticket is created in the this project.

The issue I have is if a customer sends a support request to project_email and sometimes if they do not get a response within a short period of time (like on a weekend)  then they might forward the auto responded email to emergency_email so that someone will get paged an look at it immediately.  The issue I have is that what I was expecting to happen was that because the email was sent to a new address (emergency_email) that a new ticket would be created in the emergency JSD project but what actually happens is JSD sees that the forwarded email already has a ticket in another JIRA project and appends it to the ticket in that project that already exists and so a pager is not sent.

Is there any way to force JSD to create a new ticket in a project if the email for that project is used and a ticket does not already exist in that specific project for that email (but it does in another JSD project)?

**I hope my description makes sense :o )

Patrick S · Answer

Update after further testing, PROJECT-B does not even have to be a project with a Mail Handler on it. You can comment on any project in JIRA via email by putting the issue key in the subject and sending to any address that's monitored by any Service Desk Mail Handler.

I wonder if it's using some throwback logic from the original mail handler functionality at the JIRA System level vs project level.

Patrick S · Answer

@Andy Heinzer - The issue @Gary Rafter is reporting happens in scenarios with only one email handler being addressed as well. I totally agree that if more than one handler is detected on a thread, the subject needs to be used to select the appropriate project, but empirical evidence shows that the subject is being checked before the email handler is checked.

We are able to repeat this problem by taking the following steps:

* Draft an email with an issue key from Project B in the subject.
* Only send the email the the Mail Handler address for Project A.
* The email will show up in the mail log for Project A (good).
* The email will get added as a comment to the issue in Project B, despite not being sent to Project B's mail handler (not good).

Andy Heinzer · Answer

There is a problem with being able to do so in this scenario.  When you create an issue in Jira, the email notification will contain an issue key (example KEY-123) in the subject line

The existence of this issuekey in the subject line is being used when processing future replies to these notifications in order to help sort/process where this message should go.  If you have a reply that uses two different email addresses in the To/CC fields and both email addresses are used for different mail handlers by the same Jira installation, Jira has to make a decision about which mail handler gets to process this message.  The subject line's issuekey is going to first determine where this update goes.

Jira is designed to prevent itself from getting into a mail-loop with itself. Image two service desk projects that get caught into such a loop and constantly send replies to each other to the nature of: Just confirming that we got your request. We're on it.  It's a bad experience for both Agent and customer.  So I would not expect the same Jira instance to be able to process the same single message twice, even if the message itself has two different email addresses in the To/CC fields.

What I would recommend to the customer is for them to resend their original message to the different mailbox.  This original message would not be expected to contain an issue key in the subject, and as long as the other mailbox's email address is not included in the to/cc along with the lack of the issuekey in the subject, it would generate a new ticket in the other project if that user has permissions to do so.