JIRA mail handler does not create issues if user exists but is not in JIRA application

Question

We have the following case we use for our mail handler:

* Users can write an email to a specific mail to create an issue
* If the user exists, he will be the reporter
* If the user does not exist, mail handler is the reporter

But we have a third case:

* A user can exist, but has no access to JIRA (in our case: not in the group jira-users) - e.g. he has access to confluence

In this case there is no error mail and no issue is created. The mail won't be touched in the mail box. Does anybody know the issue and has a solution?

Rachel Wright · Answer

Not with default Jira functionality.

I always had to set the expectation with my users that if they are going to use the "create via email" feature that they should login to Jira and make sure their issue was created.

Florian Schmidt_cjca23 · Answer

Thanks for the answer. Is there a possibility to send the user kind of a error message?

Rachel Wright · Answer

Hi @Florian Schmidt, I know the issue well but have no real solution.  I can confirm what you're experiencing is accurate:  if the sender isn't a recognized Jira user (i.e.: has no Jira license), issue creation from email will fail.

The failure will be noted in your Jira incoming mail log, but the end user won't be aware that their email was skipped.

We had this problem very often because we had internal users with email addresses in multiple domains.  Ex: a user sends an email from "jdoe@domain1.com" but their email address in Jira is "jdoe@domain2.com."  So watch out for that condition as well.

The only "solution" I know of is to grant Jira access to all users who send email. Or, all users could send from the same recognized address.

Hope this helps,

Rachel Wright
Author, Jira Strategy Admin Workbook