Inconsistent notifications for @mentions

[Miles Tillinger]

In the attached screenshot you can see my name has been @mentioned by the user, but this notification email is not as a result of the mention. In this case (and inconsistently) I have not been sent any notification email with 'mentioned you' in the subject, which I rely on for filtering in gmail.

Is there some hidden logic for when this email notification is or isn't sent?

[Wouter]

We have the same issue. 

• We ONLY want an email if the user is specifically mentioned in a comment
• Our Outlook filters for "mentioned you" which works fine, until you are added as a Watcher of the issue - then it sends out a regular notification email which is filtered to Trash by our Outlook rules (on purpose!) (Poor user experience!)

[Andrew Parker]

Has anything been done about this issue? It's really causing me problems as I can't reliably keep track of when someone asks me a specific question by mentioning me. I can't filter by my name as Gmail's filters seem to apply that to every Jira email. I'm guessing this is because my name is also in my email!

The only workaround I could come up with is to disable autowatch and be much more restrictive about what tickets I listen for. This isn't really a good solution though IMO. Plus, there's no way to unwatch in bulk so unless I find a hack to unwatch I'm still going to get spammed for the foreseeable future until these tickets become inactive.

[V T]

There's a way to unwatch in bulk in cloud version of JIRA at least now.

Yes, I know it was written in 2014 :)

Still unwatching doesn't help, notifications without mentions are still coming.

[Filipe Guerra]

I agree. I also use this on my filters in GMail and if my name is there I should receive the subject as "mentioned you". Please add this feature. Thanks.

[V T]

The way Gmail treats names and email complicates the solution

I went and removed space from my name in JIRA profile: Name Surname to NameSurname

This way it became possible to filter for text string without Gmail treating that as name

Here's a Gmail filter I use to filter out things not mentioning me:

from:(jira@yourdomain.atlassian.net) to:(me) -{"mentioned you" NameSurname}

[Dwight Ivany]

This is helpful hack for me.
So with two filters I get close to what I want and need with a tracking tool.

Thank you,
Dwight

[V T]

It's 2019, issue registered in 2013 still causing problems.

More than 6 years of lost notifications.

Wow...

[Adam McMillan]

We had to implement a new "Needs attention" field just so you could keep track of things that needed your attention.

What a waste of time

[İrfan Özdemir]

It's 2018, we still have this issue, please fix it Atlassian :)

[Roos]

+1 for comment of Wouter

[Rick]

+1 for Wouter!

[Leonie Wolf]

Is there a solution for this problem now?

Because I can't find an answer but it would be very important for me.
I can't believe JIRA doesn't deal with this issue!

[Dwight Ivany]

Anybody else getting "You wrote it. They loved it." emails from Atlassian indicating how popular this thread is. Funny that they have a robot bringing attention to how poor their application works. This is only popular, because so many of their users and customers are suffering bad implementation that makes it hard for teams to update each other with a simple @mention

[V T]

We got the redesign, but not the fix for inconsistent mentions! ;D

[Chris Monkiewicz]

@V T, good hack, but for large orgs with naming hooked into LDAP/AD this is not a feasible workaround. :(

[V T]

This also stopped working due to some change in the way accounts are working now in JIRA

[Kristina Haggård]

I have just found that if single user is set to receive notifications when someone comments on an issue, JIRA won't send @mentions notifications to these specific users if they are mentions in the comments. Somehow and for some strange reason Jira chooses to send the comment notification instead of the mentions notification in these cases. 

Removing single user settings from the notification scheme resolved our problems with inconsistent mail notifications when mentioning each other.

This actually made my day!

Maybe this can help other teams as well.

I just don't get why the single user choice for comments overrides mentions.... Why would one need to exclude the other? And who says I don't want the get both?..

[Lauren Summerlin]

Not sure if you may be running into this as well, but I realized that when you mention someone in a comment, they are only emailed if they are mentioned in the very first comment in an instance. Say I highlight text, comment on it and mention @JamesBond. James will get an email notification. But, if I reply to that comment and mention @Dr.Evil, he will not receive an email.

This is silly, any one who is mentioned should be notified!

[Wouter]

We would only want users to receive en email notification of an @mention at the moment they are mentioned in a new issue or new comment.

[Will Gerber]

Ran in to this issue took me hours to solve it and I am a pretty experienced SysAdmin with almost 20 years of experience.  Turns out it points back to my directory server.  How, you ask?  We use AD, and it turns out that you MUST have an email address populated in the user's 'email' attribute fielding AD.  Under user properties, General tab, email field.  If you are using Jira's internal directory, the email address is a required field for every user so that should work every time.  If you are using AD, talk to your SysAdmin, unless you are your own SysAdmin in which case do it yourself, and have him/her update the 'email' field for all users that need this feature enabled.  I would suggest telling them to do it site wide.  This resolved my issues with email notifications on mentions.  First, send a test email from jira.  Make sure the user you use to send email from Jira has the right password and all your email settings are correct.  If you can send test emails from Jira and users are receiving them, then your email stuff is squared away and you likely don't have email addresses defined on your directory.  Try that, it fixed my issues.

[Dwight Ivany]

+1 to fix this.

This has been causing our team a lot of grief for some time. Essentially there is a culture of saying @mentions don't work in JIRA, and people miss key updates.

For me I had, constantly have to remove myself as a watch from tickets, so that I have some chance of seeing @mentions.

Absolutely need the text "mentioned you" in the subject line of the email, which does not appear to be the case, if you are a watcher, or assignee. Those are the tickets that I would care about most.

[Alma G]

Tracking software without proper notifications is useless.

[Shawna Schnorr]

@Lauren Summerlin Wow, is that really true?? I've been poking around trying to see the cause of reports of inconsistent email from mentions. We will have to test that. Is there a bug raised with Atlassian for that? We'd vote on it FOR SURE.

[Chris Monkiewicz]

We just transitioned from Outlook to gmail which seems incapable of filtering on exactly "[~firstname.lastname]", instead finding "firstname lastname" in every single email, so that solution is out the window.

Atlassian, why is it that 5 years later we're still talking about this bug? Do you guys ever fix major usability issues?

[Bilal Azam]

Hi Guys, Filtering it by my 'name' has helped me pretty well in this situation using the Outlook client.

[Greg Auger]

Why is it so critical to have "mentioned you" in the Subject of the email?

An alternative that has worked for me is for the Outlook filter to examine whether my name appears in the email body.

[Adam McMillan]

I'll try that but I had mixed success with that before in gmail

[Adam McMillan]

Yeh that doesn't work, because I group emails into conversations, so then the whole conversation is marked as needing my attention, where really there was just 1 email in the thread that mentioned me

[Adam McMillan]

For some reason it works differently to filters based on "mentioned you" in the subject. That just seems to filter way better

[Adam McMillan]

+1 to get this sorted out. Reading through these comments, I can't seem to replicate the leading cause. But applying filters in my gmail reveals a bunch of JIRAs where my name is mentioned, but I get no "Mentioned You" email

[Mauro Badii]

Hi Miles,

I would suggest the email was sent because your are a watcher of the issue where the comment was done. Check the Notifications Sections of that project and the Roles to see if you are in any group or Role that would be notified on comments done to an issue.

You are added to the watchers list every time you comment on an issue so generally after commenting on an issue you'll be kept updated of the comments and other activities according to the Notifications Scheme.

If you are on OnDemand and would like more personalized help about it, feel free to open a support request at support.atlassian.com

Cheers!

[Miles Tillinger]

My question was simply: Why was I not sent an email notification for the @mention of my username?

[Zul NS _Atlassian_]

I believe the same apply as mentioned in here, where JIRA will only send the first encountered email intendent for a recipient.

[Miles Tillinger]

Thanks, that's the answer I needed.

The problem is that there is nothing 'unique' about the email subject, therefore it's next to impossible to filter it effectively.

[Ryan Cox]

The @mention email contains information specific to the fact that your name was mentioned. The regular watcher email does not contain this info. Thus it is incorrect to claim "the email was sent because your are a watcher". An email which calls out your @mention is not sent. If the watcher notification was modified to include this information, then you would be correct. But currently it is not. This is a poor experience.

[Miles Tillinger]

Indeed it is. I would be satisfied if the @mention emails were excluded from this rule, "JIRA will only send the first encountered email intendent for a recipient". But perhaps a majority of users would not appreciate the duplicate emails...

[Ryan Cox]

The alternative would be to add @mention info into the regular watcher notification emails. This would satisfy the need for @mention info while avoiding duplication. Personally, I'd be happy for either one. The current situation is the worst of all worlds where I get the @mention emails for a project until someone adds me as a watcher and suddenly I stop getting them. Thus any email filtering/highlighting I do is rendered useless.

[Heiko Thomas]

It is a really bad behaviour, that @mention does not get priority over the other notifications. This is an real issue as I can't modify the notification rules (as we do not get admin access for Jira in our company - only central admin can do). Now my users are either get overloaded with notification mails (as I can't filter them properly in my mail program) or loose the @mention mails, if there on any other list, because they are watcher, reporter or assignee. I can't believe that this has not been fixed over such a long time!!

[Wouter]

We agree 100%. 

Unbelievable that Atlassian is not fixing this issue. 

[Alma G]

Agree. Was using Wrike previously and one of best features of that software is that mentions are very much prioritized. And this should not be such a big deal. What a UX JIRA...

[Jenifer Kuntz]

Is there an open ticket on this?