Routing emails to an assignee

[Jim Stewart]

This may be the dumbest question you get today because I don't see how it's possible. But it's this:

-If someone emails a question to our HR help desk - using the auto-generated email address - how on earth can it do anything but put it in the correct project, but unassigned? I think our manager is thinking there is some magic that a person would email the help desk and it would 'know" to route, say W9 questions to Mary and relocation questions to Bob. Wouldn't they just come in generically and then someone would have to manually assign them?

[Jack Brickey · Accepted solution]

you could achieve this using Automation by parsing the email. However, the reliability of that might be a bit questionable as it relies on the user following proper formatting. So you would end up having the automation do the best it could and then any that were not deterministic would fall into Unassigned/Triage queue.

[Jim Stewart]

This is kind of what I thought. Users couldn't just send an email as they wished. We'd have to train them to follow a certain format. And assuming we could even come up with a format, we'd be probably lucky (at best) to get 50% compliance. And so a lot of stuff would fall into Unassigned it sounds like. Not a happy thing as it is HR and much of it is private and needs to go to the right person. Which means we're better off abandoning an email solution and having them go through Jira or portal. 

[Jack Brickey]

Yes absolutely! The portal is indeed the answer when structure is important. 

[Jim Stewart]

Given the fact that privacy is important, based on what you said I can't envision anything other than a two-part solution - the portal for generic requests. If a rule failed and sent it to the wrong person. But we'd also have to have separate email addresses for certain categories where an issue must go to only person and cannot be unassigned or in the general queue. 

[Jack Brickey]

not following. I would think just the opposite - Portal for specific requests that can be  assigned to individuals cleanly based upon the request type or some field selection. Emails for generic requests. Regardless you must employee Issue security if you want to control who can see specific issues. 

[Jim Stewart]

I understand your logic. However, here is what I must be able to say to HR. 

"You should route all your highly confidential emails destined for HR through Jira via the portal. All confidential issues regarding say, immigration will always go to Mary. All ethical issues will always go to Bob. And not only can Bob not see Mary's issues and Mary not see Bob's issues. set up correctly, no one else in HR (or any other employee) cansee anything. In fact, even the Jira site admin and org admin cannot see those."

Is that true? Is it realistic? Failing that, they are going to have to stick with some other solution. 

[Jack Brickey]

Jim I don’t think I can help you here. This is something you need to assess with your team and Jira documentation. You might also google and review Atlassian’s Trust Center.

cheers!

[Jim Stewart]

Ok, thanks. I think we're going to have to test security using one of our org admins and see how it plays out.