Can a reporter who is not a jira user receive an email notification?

[Helen Irwin-Brooks]

Apologies if this is a repeat - I've seen similar questions but not anything that completely relates to the problem we are having:

We have set up a number of projects in JIRA, some of which are visible to all JIRA users, some which are restricted. On the restricted project the owners want anyone who raises an issue to receive an email.

I've made sure that notifications are set on issue creation, but unless that user is assigned to that project they do not seem to receive the emails.

Any ideas gratefully received!

[Joe Pitt · Accepted solution]

You're going to upset the users. Bad idea, but you probably already know that. Just tell them it isn't technically possible. When you decide to buy a COTS product you don't get to dictate how it works at every level. I did system support work for over 25 years in the mainframe world and NONE of the venders I worked with ever tried to keep me from viewing my issues in their ticketing systems. If they're doing stuff like that I'd start looking for a new job.

[Helen Irwin-Brooks]

I will do. The issues involved are sensitive reports (I suppose the closest thing to compare them to are whistleblower reports) and so the owners need to keep certain information to themselves. I guess we are suffering from a 'one size fits all' approach and maybe JIRA is not the best place for these types of issues. Thanks for your help though - I have learnt a lot!

[Joe Pitt]

Management sometimes has odd requests. If they create it and get all the emails about updates they are in essence 'seeing' the issue. Are they trying to keep the number of users that can logon down to keep the licensing cost low? If so I understand that. In that case you could create an id for them and remove it from the group, jira-users by default, that can logon but give them create and browse access to the project.

[Helen Irwin-Brooks]

Unfortunately it isn't that simple - more a case of secret squirrels. They want the user to get the initial email only, then reply to that with their updates as and when, meanwhile the 'allowed users' can edit the issue without the creator seeing.

[Joe Pitt]

You can setup a issue security scheme to only allow people to view issues they create. that way they can't see other issues in the project. that is probably as close as you can get to what you want.

[Helen Irwin-Brooks]

Thanks Joe, I'll go back to them with that and see what they say. The impression I got when talking to them was that they only wanted people to create a ticket, receive the email confirmation, update via email and not to be able to look any issues including their own.

[John Burns]

As long as you have in your notification scheme to send emails to the reporter AND you allow 'Anyone' to browse the projects, I think this will work.

Update: if you can't have 'Anyone' be allowed to browse the projects, then try JEMH

[Helen Irwin-Brooks]

Unfortunately the owners of these particular projects do not want users to be able to browse the projects - as above, this may not be possible, in which case JIRA may not be the best solution for them. Or else they'll have to forward the emails onto the reporters so the users know what the ticket number is for their issue and can update it via email.

[Joe Pitt]

If they can't see the project how can they raise (create) the issue? By default if the user can't at least browse the project they won't get any emails about issues in it and if they did they wouldn't be able to see the issue when clicking on the link in the email.

[Helen Irwin-Brooks]

They have the ability to create an issue and select one of the restricted projects from the drop down list. The owners of the projects do not want anyone bar a select few to be able to browser the projects and yes you are right they cannot click on the link in the email to see the issue. The owners of the project want the users to be able to update their issue by replying to the email (so not logging in and updating the issue that way).

Not sure if this is possible, but would like to know as it maybe they need an other solution than JIRA?