New e-mails with different Subjects are added as comments to unrelated issues

[Deleted user]

Hi. I am having an issue where a series of e-mails are being added as comments to an existing closed Issue instead of creating new issues. The Subjects of the e-mails are different, but the sender is the same.

E.g:

Issue created via e-mail request with subject:

INC0860423 - EFB Data Not received

This issue is closed.

Then I receive from same sender an email request with subject:

INC0917344 - vAmos Alarms

This, instead of creating a new issue, is being added to the first one as comment.

This is a really bad behaviour which totally destroys the tracing of the issues raised via e-mail. Anyone has found this issue and knows a solution? Is it because it starts as INC? if so... it is a terrible matching criteria

[Deleted user]

So, talking with the customer support, basically they tell me that the issue is that the messageID is the same, because the reporter used an old email, deleted all the fields including the subject and content and then wrote a new one. Which is a terrible way of handling e-mails, because they do not take into consideration a more than common situation when there is a constant report of issues between two companies. Really, really bad. Their solution is: Tell the customers to not send e-mails that way. Dear goodness.

[Jack Brickey]

that is certainly odd. one question/thought...

How are these emails being created. Is the user replying to the Jira notifications for these existing tickets or are they creating them from scratch. I wonder if the user might be replying to the first ticket and changing the subject to the second. I know that I have been successful previously creating a comment by creating an email from scratch and simply entering the issuekey. You might check the logs (very limited in cloud for the user) but I suspect you will need to check w/ Atlassian Support to get to the bottom of it.

[Deleted user]

Hi. The e-mails are manually created by a person from scratch (so it is not an automated e-mail). In the subject or the content of the second e-mail there is no reference to the issue number created for the first one. 

[Jack Brickey]

either there is a very weird bug in your instance or there is something fundamental being overlooked. Unfortunately I cannot really troubleshoot from afar and recommend opening a support ticket so Atlassian can dig into the logs more completely. Prior to that I would again suggest you look at the logs provided to you - Jira settings > System > Audit log - find the log associate w/ the suspect issue/email and see if there are any smoking guns.

[Deleted user]

Thank you. I have checked the audit log but there is nothing really relevant there. I have opened the ticket to see if they can figure out what is going on. Will post it here whenever I get the solution 

[Suzi Firth]

Hi All,

I can confirm that what support told the original user is correct.

In our organization we have amendment notifications for employees that are emailed out  when their location changes. So the subject might be "Amendment notification John Doe" and then they'll send one for another employee "Amendment notification Travis Barker".

If the reporter goes back to a previous email they have sent and replies or forwards, updates the text for the next employee and sends to our Servicedesk like it's a new email, it adds as a new comment on the original ticket they sent way back when.

If the reporter starts a brand new email, same subject like "Amendment notification Travis Barker" pastes in the template for the email and fills in all the details and sends, this is logged as a new ticket.

I reviewed the email headers for both emails and none of the message IDs were the same but yet Jira Email Handler understood these to be the same for some reason and added as a comment. I've advised the reporter to always start a fresh email for these notifications, but it does raise the issue that a reporter can find an email from 3 months ago, reply and expect it to be a new ticket, but actually adds as a new comment to a ticket that has been closed for some time.

I would expect that once a ticket has reached a closed status, it is locked for edited and can no longer be commented on.

Regards,

Suzi