How can I add an email to a custom field that may be used with automation rules and other services?

[Miguel Bravo]

Good evening,
We have hit a bump on the road and would appreciate some assistance.

We used to be able to add outside users/emails to a custom field we created. Then we'd have an automation rule send emails and keep our users updated about their issues. They weren't being assigned nor were able to view any issues. Which didn't violate the terms of Jira users. Mostly, a way for us to keep record of whom to send an email to.
I digress, we moved our project from Service Desk to Business Project and now we can use the field as an email. None of the emails will stay if we fill them in and hit enter. Anyone have a solution I could add emails added to an issue so our automation rules can have functions like send emails to them?
Thank you

In attachment, custom fields we've tried.

1. is our original field that we were able to add outside emails and automation rules sent them emails just fine.

2. is another custom field, it is just a "Text Field (Single Line)" but won't appear in the automation rules under contacts.

3. is a "URL Field" which worked to no avail.

Thank you for any assistance.

-MB

[Earl McCutcheon]

Hello @Miguel Bravo ,

You noted starting off in Service desk origionally, were the email addresses customer accounts in the Service Desk project type?  as Service Desk is the only project type that can be used to send notification to unlicensed external user, known as a Customer Account and the following article breaks down what actions will trigger the notifications for customer accounts:

• "How does Jira Service Desk process email requests?" 

Alternatively if the email addresses in the custom field are licensed user accounts, you can place these values in a user custom field then add that user custom field to a custom event in the notification scheme that can be triggered in a workflow transition as covered in:

• Notifications based on User/Group Custom Field Value not being delivered 

An additional alternative would be to look into an add-on as described in the following thread:

• https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Jira-Core-questions/Send-email-to-user-in-custom-field-when-issue-transitions/qaq-p/276057

Regards,
Earl

[Miguel Bravo]

Hi Earl, and yes the email addresses were under "customers". We used to get the option to "create" new user if we put their name into a "user picker" custom field. I'm assuming that was under service desk. We switched the project to business and still had those emails under customer. Once removed we no longer had the option to add emails to users or any way to send emails. 

We only want to send a "confirmation email," after a specific transition.

Thank you for your assistance Earl.