Is it possible to disable new ticket creation through email but leave option to update existing ones

[Jari Riihimäki]

We have some custom fields in our service desk tickets which needs to be properly filled during ticket creation. We also want to allow our service desk team to be able to update tickets via email but the initial ticket creation should be always done via Jira Service Desk. Is it possible to prevent new ticket creations via email but keep the email request enabled so that existing tickets can be updated via email ?

[Julien Rey · Accepted solution]

Hi @Jari Riihimäki, there is no official setting in Service Desk that allows such behavior, but we have an open feature request that I would suggest to watch and vote for: https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JSDSERVER-815

Having said that, there is a workaround that you can used to prevent users from creating requests by email (while they can still comment by email). 

The workaround consists in making the custom fields mandatory in the request type form:

By making such fields mandatory, it won't be able to set them via email (since emails can only be used to set the ticket summary and description), and the emails will be rejected by the Service Desk Mail Handler (configured in Project Settings > Email Request), since these fields are mandatory.

It is important to note that the customer won't be aware that the issue failed to be created, since no notification will be sent to this user.

[Jari Riihimäki]

Thank you for your prompt and quick respond!

This sure can be a good enough workaround for us but unfortunately I can't make any additional fields mandatory for request type which is assigned to emails. "Update" button doesn't do anything when I try to set a mandatory field, there is no error or actions when clicking "Update". The change is just not saved.

I tried this with few fields (I even created dummy custom field for this purpose) but none of those were set as mandatory. I can set additional mandatory fields for request types which are not assigned for email but not the one receiving emails. Can you please advice if there are any special field requirements for this mandatory fields.

We are using JIRA Core 7.8.1 and JIRA Service Desk 3.11.1

[Julien Rey]

@Jari Riihimäki

You're totally right! It's not possible to set a field (that is not a summary or description) as required, if the Request Type is used to process incoming email. It seems to be some "protection" to prevent SD admin to create a request type form with fields that are required and that will prevent any email to create a new issue.

Here is a workaround, but please note that it is not supported by Atlassian since it will require database manipulation. Please make sure to create an XML backup within JIRA and also a native database backup before applying the changes to the database.

Here is the steps:

1 - Get the form ID of to the Request Type from the URL that you see when you edit the form. In the example below, it is "8".
<JIRA_BASE_URL>/servicedesk/admin/SD2/request-types/request-type/8

2 - Stop JIRA

3 - Run the following query in the database (replace <ID> with the ID found above):

select * from "AO_54307E_VIEWPORTFIELD" where "FORM_ID" = <ID>;

 4 - From the result of the query, identify the ID(s) of the row(s) where you need to set a custom field by default

5 - Run the following UPDATE query to force these fields to be required:

update "AO_54307E_VIEWPORTFIELD" set "REQUIRED" = true where "ID" in (<ID1>, <ID2>, etc...);

6 - Re-start JIRA

If you go back to the form, you should see that the fields are now required, and if you send an email to the incoming email address to create a new issue, the email will be rejected:

[Jari Riihimäki]

Thank you very much for your support, we will give it a try in our next service maintenance.

[Julien Rey]

you're very welcome! Please keep me updated