Can only admins access the Personal Jira Settings - Notifications Settings - Email notifications?

[Charles Amschel]

Settings > Personal Jira Settings > Notifications Settings | Projects and issues

I'm being told that non-admin users' settings screen don't look the same as mine. They are getting bombarded by email notifications from bulk issue edits. 

[Rachel Wright · Accepted solution]

Hi @Charles Amschel , great question! There are multiple places and mechanisms to control notifications for Jira issues.

To start, individual Jira projects can have custom or shared notification schemes.

As an application admin, you can see all the different notification schemes by visiting: Admin > Issues > Notification schemes. Direct link: https://YOUR-SITE-NAME.atlassian.net/secure/admin/ViewNotificationSchemes.jspa

The screenshot shows that the Jira project called "Customer" uses a custom notification scheme also "Customers." Click the "Notifications" link on the right to see the notification settings for that scheme.

Application admins and project admins can also see notification settings from an individual Jira project's settings area.

Here's an example summary page for the "Customer" Jira project. Look for the "Notifications" area on the right to see which scheme the project uses. Direct link: https://YOUR-SITE-NAME.atlassian.net/plugins/servlet/project-config/PROJECT-KEY/summary

Note: It's possible for a Jira project to have no notification scheme.

Next, it's good to know that admins and users alike can suppress notifications when making bulk changes.

Jira Service Management projects also have additional notifications that are sent to "customers" when they create requests from the portal. You can turn those notifications on or off (or customize their content) by visiting a project's setting page and clicking "Customer Notifications" as shown below. Direct link: https://YOUR-SITE-NAME.atlassian.net/jira/servicedesk/projects/PROJECT-KEY/settings/customer-notifications

Next, look for the "Send mail for this update" check box at the bottom of the bulk change wizard. These days this option is unchecked by default. 

Finally, as you noticed, there are also personal notification settings that individual users can set for their own account profile.

Users can click the gear icon at the top right of any Jira page and select "Personal Jira settings." The screenshot below shows all the things they can set themselves.

There are also other potential notifications triggered by automations, third-party apps, etc. But this should give you a good start for where to look and what to adjust.

Hope this helps!

Rachel Wright
Author, Jira Strategy Admin Workbook 

[Rachel Wright]

PS @Charles Amschel - I definitely recommend creating a service account so you can login as an end user and see what they see. You can disable this account while you're not using it to avoid paying an additional license fee. 

You might also have access to a user impersonation feature. See https://support.atlassian.com/user-management/docs/log-in-as-another-user/ for details.

Have a great rest of your day!

[Charles Amschel]

Thanks for the information and suggestions, Rachel. It turns out I hadn't adequately communicated the location of the personal email notification settings to the team, which non-admins do have access to and as you noted in your screenshot and description are found here: Jira Personal Settings > Notification Settings | Projects and Issues (on the left side panel) > Email column 

I'll look further into those other settings as well. That last feature you mentioned in the follow up comment sounds very useful too!

Thank you again.