Notifications not sending to certain users

[John Edwards (Gmail)]

I have multiple AD user directories setup in Jira service desk but when we open a new case or comment on an issue, the users in a particular user directory do not recieve any notifications.

I have tried the below:

• The config in each user directory is the same
• The OU layout in AD is the same for each user direcctory
• The user account and email address is visable in Jira
• The notification helper confirms they should receive these notifications.
• I can email the user with the send email facility
• Nothing shown in the log file to show why the emails arent being sent
• We would like to move to a new server in order to upgrade to newer versions but the same issue is occurring on the new server on an up to date version of Jira before importing any projects from our old setup.
• Our emails are being sent throgh a gmail account, when i make a change to an issue the emails to some users can be seen in sent items but not these specific users.

Any help much appreciated.

Thanks

John Edwards

[Andy Heinzer]

HI John,

I understand that you have a user directory in Jira that has a group of users that do not receive Service Desk notifications for some reason.

But I am somewhat confused by your description here.  You mentioned that all the user directories are the same configuration.  But why?  If the configuration is truly exactly the same, then there would be no need in Jira to have duplicate user directories with the same settings.  How many user directories exist in Jira right now?

I have seen lots of Jira environments that will try to connect to the same LDAP/AD server repeatedly, but just slightly altering either the user filter or group filter in order to sync over a different set of users/groups separately.  The problem with this approach tends to be that Jira is duplicating efforts by syncing lots of repeated user data in a needless manner.  Also Jira does not aggregate the group memberships between user directories (a common misconception), meaning just because a username might exist in both user directory A and user directory B does not mean that they can get the group memberships from both user directories within Jira.  When the user signs into Jira, they only have group memberships found in the top ordered directory within Jira. The notable exception to this rule is if you use the read only with local groups option in Jira it lets you give these LDAP/AD users group membership to a local group that exists in the internal directory. 

The notification helper can be helpful for troubleshooting, but historically is has not always been aware of the abilities or differences that exist in Service Desk.   Service Desk handles customer notifications differently than Jira Core/Software does.  It has to, since Service Desk customers are not technically licensed users.  Jira Core/Software require that users that get notifications be licensed Jira users.  Service Desk does not, but in order to achieve that, it's using a different set of code for   Which makes me wonder, what version of Jira and Service Desk are you using here?

As a general guidelines, I would typically suggest reducing the number of user directories you have in Jira to 1 logical user directory in Jira per 1 unique LDAP/AD instance.  It's not a hardline requirement to do it this way, but it tends to avoid lots of confusing scenarios that can happen when trying to determine exactly which user directory that user account is current set in Jira to use when trying to login.

Alternatively, you could try to turn on the outgoing mail debug logging in Jira, recreate this problem, and see if you can take a closer look at the logs Jira generates during this time to see if you can find more clues.  The default logging for Jira might not be sufficient to capture this so the debug might help.  But I would not recommend leaving debug logging on for a long time, these logs tend to grow really big, really fast, so perhaps turn off the debug after you have captured the events itself.  Steps to do this are in How to Enable Debugging Mode for Emails.

I hope this helps.

Andy

[John Edwards (Gmail)]

Thanks for your reply Andy.

The different user directories are setup that way because we have users from different locations in separate OUs. I’ve tried to do it with one user directory but it fails part way through the synchronisation.

There was five separate user directories, one for each location but I have removed the other user directories and left one on while testing. This directory for a specific site syncs correctly, the user details come through into JIRA but we cannot email users from it as before. If I add another for any other site it works as normal and allows me to send emails to users in that OU.

Our old server is running core 7.1.7 and Service desk 3.1.10 and the new one is on core 8.2.22 and service desk 4.2.2 both with the same issue for this specific OU

The email debug log shows other emails being sent but not the emails sent to this group of users.

Thanks

John

[Andy Heinzer]

It's difficult to say with the information we have right now.  I have a hunch as to the problem here, but there are many unknowns to be sure.

I would be interested to see if you can try something when Jira exhibits this behavior.  Namely, try to have one of those accounts login to the Jira site near the time when this email notification was sent (but not to that user).  If the user is a licensed Jira user, they should be able to login to the main site.

If they cannot, then it tends to indicate that their user account is not being granted the application access group needed to login. If that is true, this would also prevent Jira Core/Software notifications from being sent to that user.

If these notifications are Service Desk customer notifications, then this theory holds less water, as that system uses notifications very differently.  Service Desk customers though can't login to the main jira site anyways, they only have expected access to the customer portal, but access to that does not require any group membership in Jira, just an active account.

[john-em]

They're service desk customers unfortunately. However the users can login to the portal as normal. The account info is being pulled through and I can see the correct email address on the account details section of JIRA.

I don’t believe this is related to the OU as I said previously as its affecting users outside of that group. Checking the mail queue and sent items of our email server its just not generating the email.

[Andy Heinzer]

HI John,

I created a support case for this topic over in https://getsupport.atlassian.com/servicedesk/customer/portal/3/SDS-43185

I have requested some additional information about your system so that our support team can better try to help here.

Regards,

Andy

[john-em]

Hi Andy

I think this is resolved now. Our service desk is set to use the default notification scheme but adding notifications onto the service desk scheme seems to make it all work correctly. I’ve been monitoring for a couple of days to make sure all emails are going correctly and it seems to be doing so.

If it raises its head again I’ll post back up on here.

Thank you for your help

John