Making tickets re-open when a customer replies - just doesn't work at all!?

[Deleted user]

Hi everyone. 

We have recently started using JIRA Service desk. 

We realised that when we resolve a request it seems to stay resolved even if the customer replies with another comment. 

We also don't seem to get a notification when this happens. 

I am baffled as to why this is default behaviour? Or if it is not default behaviour have we set things up wrong? 

I have set an automation rule (see screen shot) but a customers comment on a resolved ticket STILL doesn't re-open the ticket. I can't see any other automation rules we have set which would conflict with this new rule I've set so I'm really confused. 

Any help anyone can provide would be brilliant. We just want to make sure any customer comments are notified and actionable. At the moment they would just be lost and our agents wouldn't know to respond. 

[Deleted user · Accepted solution]

It looks like the permissions are set up for transitions as they should be (attached screenshot)I have also greatly simplified the automation rule (screenshot).

I have just run a test and this is STILL not reopening an issue if I reply to an email as a customer when the issue has been previously resolved. 

Very confused as something is clearly still preventing this rule from working?

[Deleted user]

Or - do I need to somehow give customers permission to transition an issue?

[Deleted user]

I don't think this could be the cause as the issue still doesn't re-open if I add a comment as an administrator. 

[Jeremy Riga]

Not sure if you ever got closure on this. I am finding we have the same trouble. Default installation of Service Desk, anyone can create an issue so I tested with an external mail account.

1. Create a new Service Desk issue using external account
2. Issue is open, notifications go out
3. Issue marked as resolved by the agent and external test customer email goes out and is received
4. External test customer replies to the 'resolved' email
5. Jira immediately receives the new comment from the external customer email, the comment shows in the issue timeline, but the issue stays closed

We are using the pre-configured automation rule and made no changes to it at all.

[Deleted user]

I was starting to wonder why more people didn't have my issue! 

We had exactly the same thing, and trying to fix it by changing the automation rule still hasn't resolved our issue. 

We like to close out all our dated and resolved tickets, leaving only a few 'open' at any one time. This is for us the easiest way to manage things and make sure we don't miss anything. If we have a list of open tickets which is too long, things get missed. This is why we need to resolve tickets when it seems like the customer needs no further help. Often the customer doesn't reply to our last message so we resolve the issue for the time being and on the off chance they come back to us two weeks later with a new/related issue - we'll pick the ticket back up again. 

Problem is we won't know because the ticket is resolved already and won't re-open.

Perhaps the issue is in the way we're trying to use the system - I'm going to open a support ticket on this and see what's recommended.  

[Jeremy Riga]

It took me two hours last night, but I finally discovered why the automation wasn't running, and also discovered the log tool.

1. Head to your service desk project, and then Settings, then Automation
2. To the right of each automation rule, click the ellipsis (...) and then click 'View Log'
3. This log shows the reason that each automation succeeded or failed for issues that run through it

Once I found that log, I was able to see that our automation was failing to re-open tickets because the default configuration of the automation (which we are using) wants to transition issue to 'Re-open issue'.

This seemed right, but the automation log was showing that there was no such transition. 

From there, I opened the Jira Service Desk workflow that pertained to the issue I was working on. In this case, the test issues were just using the plain old (out-of-the-box) "Service Request" issue type.

Unfortunately, the Service Request issue type doesn't have a transition in its workflow to 'Re-open'. This can be found by looking at Settings -> Workflow and choosing the issue type your test cases are using.

The default Service Request issue type did, however, have a transition in place to go back to 'In-Progress'.

Knowing that, I could either create a new transition in that workflow and call in 'Re-open', or I can change the automation rule to transition back to 'In-progress'. Either one will work.

In my case, I changed the automation rule to transition back to 'In-progress' instead of 'Re-open issue' and tested again. Works perfectly now.

[Deleted user]

After two months I've managed to do what we require with your great help @Jeremy Riga. 

Thanks for spending two hours on it! You solved for us as well as yourself. 

Note to any new JIRA users: Workflows are copletely seperate to and have a direct effect on automation rules. The two are tightly linked and you can't make changes to one without understanding the other. 

Thanks again!

[Ben Upham]

Thank you to you both.

[Deleted user]

Apologies, I should have thought of that. 

Here is the configuration - I don't think I edited it at all from the default setting. 

[Max Foerster - K15t]

Hi Elliot,

first guess: has the user the needed permission for the transition? If yes, next thing for me to test would be, reduce the if clauses and simplify it for testing purposes.

[Max Foerster - K15t]

Hi Elliot,

could you please provide a screenshot of the configuration of the rule after clicking on "Edit"? Would be a good point to start troubleshooting there.

Best, Max