Say goodbye to inbox overload: Updates to Jira email batching

[#1]

Hi Jira Community 👋

Are you getting a few too many Jira emails? We’re excited to announce some recent updates we’ve made to email batching of Jira notifications which will mean less clutter in your inbox.

But, what exactly is email batching?

Email batching is a process where we group several updates into a single email, instead of sending individual emails for each update.

We only batch updates around field changes and comments. Critical updates like assigned to you and mentions are always sent immediately, ensuring you stay on top of the most important information.

So, say you made a couple of field updates ad also left a comment on an issue – instead of receiving individual emails for each action, these updates would be consolidated into a single email.

While email batching isn’t new to Jira, it was previously unavailable if you had customized your email configuration.

We’ve begun rolling out email batching support for these customizations, starting with custom email domains and sender (from) names.

What we’re seeing so far

Many of our customers opt to configure their Jira notification emails so they appear to come directly from their company. They do this by customizing the sender email address with their company’s domain. Learn more about sending emails with a custom domain

Each day, over 900,000 emails are sent out from Jira to customers using custom email domains. That’s over 300 million emails per year!

With our updates to email batching, these customers are already seeing a 33% reduction in their emails. That means we’re on track to save over 100 million emails being sent over the next year 👏

We’ve also recently completed batching support for emails using a custom from name – this is where admins have changed the sender name of Jira’s email notifications. Learn more about changing the sender name of Jira notifications

Every day, more than 2.8 million emails are sent using a customized from name. While we’re still waiting on the data, we expect a similar decrease in the number of emails sent due to these updates, meaning a projected yearly reduction of 284 million emails!

Together, we're projecting to reduce overall email volume by 390 million emails per year!

What’s coming next?

We’re continuing to explore more ways we can improve how we batch Jira email notifications, including support for emails that use plain text formatting.

Keep an eye out for more on these updates, and as always, feel free to share your thoughts and suggestions with us in the comments below. Thanks!

[Ammar Ahmed Butt]

Awesome!! @Eric Zheng 🔥🔥🔥

[Yatish Madhav]

Thanks for the update @Eric Zheng - this is great. Few comments/questions please ...

• What is the time threshold within which the batching is done? I.e. if changes are made in 5 or 10 or 30 minutes, then only are notifications batched in an email ... 
• Can we edit the header and footer of the email notifications?
• Is this relating to Software, Service Management and Confluence notifications? incl customer notifications?
• I often have what I call notification fatigue so this will be a great help - thanks to you and the Atlassian team

[Eric Zheng]

Hey @Yatish Madhav ,

Happy to answer your questions! 

1. There is a rolling 3-minute time window within which the batching is done, with a maximum threshold of 15-minutes. 
2. At the moment, it's not possible to edit the header and footer of the email notifications. If this is something you're interested in, I'd love to chat (dropping my email below)!
3. This batching just relates to email issue notifications in Jira Software, Service Management, and Work Management. It doesn't relate to Confluence notifications nor customer notifications within Jira Service Management.

I hope that helps!

If you have any questions or feedback, feel free to also send me an email at ezheng@atlassian.com

Best,

Eric

[Yatish Madhav]

Thanks so much @Eric Zheng - might be useful to add the timing and eleborate with some examples in the article please? I think that will help me and others too?

Thanks for clarifying the other questions ... I will contact if needed.

[Aron Gombas _Midori_]

@Yatish Madhav You asked if batch notifications are affecting Confluence. Note that there is a very similar effort with Confluence digest email being over-worked right now!

https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Confluence-articles/Your-Confluence-Daily-Digest-email-has-a-fresh-new-look-and-feel/ba-p/2372294#M5990

[Davor Fisher]

Is batching email only available if you customize your email configuration? What if you're using the Atlassian native email jira@domain?

We just recently migrated to Cloud from DC and a lot of complaints I am getting are related to too many emails.

[Justin Bartlett]

I just wanted to take a moment to express my appreciation for the notification-batching feature in Jira. It's such a helpful feature that allows me to stay focused and organized by receiving consolidated updates instead of constant interruptions. It's a time-saving and productivity-enhancing aspect of Jira that I'm grateful for.

[Eric Zheng]

Hey @Davor Fisher , email batching is available for most emails including those using the Atlassian native email jira@domain, as well as those with a customised email domain. For more details on how batching works, you can refer to this article Jira Cloud Email Notifications are Delayed. I'd also love to chat more about the complaints relating to too many emails - we recognise that this is a big problem and we're actively looking to solve it.

[Dan.Tombs]

I have to admit, I cannot wait for this to come in. It was nice for Server/DC to have batch notifications and it is something I am looking forward in regards to cloud. No user likes a bombardment of emails since they then become noise and pointless.

[Davor Fisher]

@Eric Zheng I am not sure the batching email works for our site or at least all the time; I have emails that come as two emails even though the changes in Jira occurred in less then 5 minutes between each other. 

I feel like the noise from emails is because folks were used to the Server/DC version where emails were grouped and sent as one email when multiple updates happen. 

[Marcus Jensen]

Such a great feature!! Love how everything will now be consolidated 

[Eric Zheng]

Hey @Davor Fisher, your instance might be using another customisation that doesn't have batching support yet. Feel free to shoot through a message to my email at ezheng@atlassian.com and I'd be happy to investigate this further with you!

[Alberto Misrachi]

Is there any setting for this?

Looking for one the current emails + one daily email with a resume of all-day activity?

[Eric Zheng]

Hey @Alberto Misrachi, there currently isn't a way to configure batching settings for Jira emails. You may be referring to Confluence daily digest emails - if this is a feature that you think would be beneficial, I'd love to learn more! Feel free to shoot through a message at ezheng@atlassian.com, and I'd be happy to chat!

[Frank Dutenhöfer]

@Eric Zheng how do I activate this for our Jira cloud instance?

[Eric Zheng]

Hey @Frank Dutenhöfer , this should already be activated for all Jira cloud instances. If you're not seeing any changes, then it's likely:

1. It's an email for a critical update (being mentioned or assigned on an issue). These type of emails will always be sent through immediately to ensure you can respond immediately to key updates.
2. The email has been customised to use plaintext formatting instead of HTML. This is one of the more unique cases that currently doesn't have email batching support.

Let me know if it's neither of these categories, and we can investigate further.

[Frank Dutenhöfer]

@Eric Zheng I'll check