All, I'm back from my meeting and wanted to weigh back in here. Bear with me if I get sideways on this as it is a bit difficult to follow the thread. Let's rewind to the beginning with @Scott Searcy1's initial questions:
Q: "Can someone shed some light on how this is being done? Do the watchers have the "normal" JIRA view of the ticket or does everyone access it through the Service Desk?"
A: This depends on the classification of the user and what software applications you actually have, e.g. just JSD or JSD + JSW. Let's take the most likely case first. You have JSD agents and JSD Customers. As a customer, you can add a participant via the portal, or email (if configured). As an agent or admin you can add via portal, email or the application itself. Typically, as an agent/admin you are going to be working in the application but you have access to all methods. This is well documented in the link I provided earlier - Adding Request Participants. An important note is specified in the documentation right up front - Request participants are customers and organizations who can view, comment, and receive notifications about the request. Participants receive the same notifications as the reporter, and can turn off notifications at any time.
Q: What are watchers?
A: Fair question and I will admit this can be confusing when "Participants" is thrown into the fold. There are some subtle (?) differences and in the previous documentation there is a section that might explain this...
Add watchers
You can also involve other agents or JIRA users to get help with an issue. For example, you might want JIRA Software developers to help analyze a bug that a customer has reported. To involve internal users, add them as watchers. As watchers, they're notified about internal activity on an issue, and can communicate with you via internal comments.
So the main take away is the notified about internal activity verbage. Watchers get it all Participants get the 'customer' view, i.e. what is consider public. Finishing up my response (sorry for novel) here are some other tidbits that I thought might be helpful based upon reading this thread:
- Customer do not have access to the application and can only view issues via the portal or get notifications via email.
- If you are using JSW for your Development side of the business you can make any of the JSW users be Collaborators. As collaborators, they can make internal comments on tickets but cannot be assigned or transition the issues. The latter is for agents and admins only. I beleive a JSW collaborator can add themselves to Watcher list too.
- @mentions are very useful for 'one-time' notifications. I use this frequently vs. assuming someone wants to be a watcher and they get upset about all the spam. :-) @laurence bascle1, you mention that this functionality doesn't work. If that is indeed what you are experiencing that may be a bug BUT it is very possible that the specific user you are trying to @mention does not have access to the project. I recommend trying @mention to someone you know is part of the project (look at Project>project settings>users and roles).
Bottom-line take away on the notifications: Use Participants for Customers and Watchers for those with access to the application.
I hope this has helped folks here and again I apologize if my earlier response came across poorly. As a community contributor, I want to be helpful but as it is a sideline activity at times my responses are not well formed. :-)
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