Configure JIRA to send emails to all team members on every new issue and comment

[Borek Bernard]

At the moment, I can manually watch an issue in JIRA to get email notitications. However, I'd like to configure JIRA so that everyone by default receives emails on new issues and new comments on issues, like add everyone on the project to the watch list by default.

How do I do that?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Accepted solution]

Emailing everyone is reasonably easy, although I'd avoid clobbering everyone with everything ("Jira mail fatigue" sets in rapidly and people tend to set up rules to ignore everything). You can add jira-users to the notification scheme, that will get everyone who can log in. I'd tend to go for something a bit more simple and use a role - for example, if you use "create: role: developers", then all the people who are in the role get told about new issues.

The watch list is a different story though - you'll need a spot of code to do that. Again, I'd check with the users - we allow reporter/assignee and develoers to set watchers on issues here, which does mean less watchers, but we still get a lot of requests for "stop drive-by watching - I don't want other people telling me what I should be watching", so a blanket add could generate more. I prefer the "watchers field" plugin, which lets people add watchers manually on the create screen.

[Vishnukumar Vasudevan]

I would say we can manage this using 'Roles' and 'Notification Scheme' in a better way.

[Borek Bernard]

Nic, good point about the "JIRA mail fatigue". What I still don't quite understand is how "notification scheme" relates to a "list of watchers". Basically I think I would be happy with a solution that auto-adds certain users (like all users in the Developers role) to every new issue. I don't want to be adding them manually for every new issue I create.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Ah, ok. A notification scheme maps users (static or dynamic) to notifications. You can think of it as the map that says

"When event A happens to an issue, mail users if they match conditions X, Y, or Z".

The conditions of X, Y and Z can be

1. Single user (hard coding = bad, because only Jira system admins can edit these)
2. A group of users (hard coding = bad)
3. A role (better, because your project leads can maintain people in the roles - e.g. "users in this project", "developers for this project)
4. A dynamic item, current assignee
5. A watcher (good, because individual users can add/remove these themselves)
6. Reporter
7. (There are others, but they get horribly sneaky and you'll only need them after you've got the hang of the basics)

Line 5 is the one you're interested in, and I have to say when I'm knocking up a new notification scheme, my starting point is always "mail most events to Reporter, Assignee and all Watchers"

Note, if a user matches more than one line, it still only sends one email to them. Also, you might want to get your users to unset the flag "email me on my changes" so they don't spam themselves! (and consider setting that as the default too)

[carlitos.melgar@izote.net]

I think the notification system is missing a "and" condition. My customers are suffering "Jira mail fatigue." So I have turned off the "All Watchers" notification. But now I have had to add a Role to the notification and now I get notified of everything and getting "Jira email fatigue." What would be cool is if Jira would allow to select with JQL some conditions for notification. I.e. User in Watchers and User in (Developers Role).

That would really be something!!!

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Er, that's kind of made the usage of the "watchers" functionality utterly pointless. The reason to be a watcher is that you are asking for information on a specific issue, such as the emails. If you turn off watchers emails, there's no point in having the function, it doesn't do much else, and you might as well turn it off completely.

If your users are getting Jira email fatigue, then you'd be far better off looking at your notification schemes and turning off most or all of the other notifications. A good starting point is "reporter, assignee and all watchers" as that will only send to people who are directly involved (plus the watchers, who have specifically asked to be notified). Turn off the permission for anyone to add watchers (so individuals have to explicitly volunteer) and use the "email me on my changes".

If you do that, then your suggested "and" function becomes unnecessary, and the system will do what it's designed to do.

[carlitos.melgar@izote.net]

It wouldn't make it pointless Nic. Otherwise, I wouldn't even bother writing about it. I think it would enhance it for certain needs (as I doubt that I'm the only guy in the world with this problem). Let me try to explain: I use Jira for Help Desk and Customer Project Management. So:

1. Customers are users of Jira, but they don't log in to Jira (they don't like it). They like their Outlook and email for communication. They create issues with the Email Handler. They become the reporter automatically which is nice. But if they copy their own team (customer side), they get added as watchers. Same happens with Project Manager and Technicians below. (Note: Customers can never be the assignee. Can only be Watcher or Reporter).
2. Project manager (me and others) log into Jira and we are sometimes assigned to issues or we are the reporter of the issue. Sometimes Technicias add us as watchers. So the project manager can be in any of these three (assignee, reporter or watcher).
3. Technicians (rest of staff) log into Jira to do their work. They can also be any of the assignee, reporter or watcher.

The "Jira email fatigue" happens on the customer side when they copy their own members. They get an email from their (company wide email) side plus an email from Jira stating exactly the same thing. My customer demanded this to be turned off because it's obnoxious and really annoying to them. And I think everyone is trying to do their best to please their customers.

The consequence goes now over to the project manager is he is a watcher. He simply doesn't get notified. If I do a group role notification on events, then every project manager gets notified on every single issue causing "Jira email fatigue." Project managers and technicians should only get notified when needed.

So it would be nice to have the "and" condition that allows to notify:

• "All Watchers" who are IN Role of (Project Manager or Technician).
• "Reporter" who are IN Role of (Project Manager or Technician).

[carlitos.melgar@izote.net]

One more thing.

1. When my staff or project managers reply, everyone (assignee, reporter or watchers) should get the notification. I'm accomplishing this with JETI
2. The above notification system should only happen when a customer sends and email.
3. If the customer logs into Jira to write a comment or upload an attachment, then everyone (assignee, reporter or watchers) should get notified.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

But that's my point - normalise the roles, and you don't need "X in Y".

[Elliott]

Carlitos,

The issue to me is that the customers are communicating to eachother and jira instead of just jira. You should try to make it clear to the customers to only repond to the JIRA response and not the internal email and JIRA. 

[Vishnukumar Vasudevan]

Hi,

Create a new role like 'Listener'. Add all of your team members in to this role in the corresponding project.

Go to your Notification scheme, for all events set the notifications to be sent to the project role ‘Listener’

Thanks, Vishnu.

[Borek Bernard]

Can they opt out from notifications for certain issues? Like "unwatch" a certain issue?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

No, that's where the watchers thing comes in - they can opt-out by un-watching. You can't opt-out of a role.

It does sound like you're going to need some form of automatic-watching function, although adding all the users every time could cause some pain if you've got more than a handful of people.

[Borek Bernard]

We are a very small team at the moment so it's desirable that everyone knows about everything. Can JIRA auto-add users / roles to the watch list at the time of creation of an issue?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

No, but you could add a plugin to do it (I don't know if there is one already, but the code wouldn't be hard, and you could use the Script runner plugin for it instead of a hard-coded one). Watching is user based thing, you can't add roles, but the code really would be as simple as "go through the Jira users group and call the add-user-as-watcher code for each person"

[Elliott]

Hello,

To me this sounds like an issue with understanding how the security "layers" work in JIRA.  These go

JIRA access > All Users who have login access to a JIRA instance

      Permissions Schemes > Users that have access to a project and                                                        actions within the project

              Issue Security > Controlled views of issues within a project.

                         Notifications Schemes > These are based on the above                                                                       permissions.

You cannot create a notification scheme that notifies all JIRA users of an issue created, updated, etc. because that is based on the security/permissions in JIRA. The list of users who can receive information about this is filtered by the users who have permission to view it in the project. 

Solution:

1. Create a group and add all users who need to recieve all emails to this group.

2. In the notification scheme(s) add the group to the create issue and comment added events.

3. Add the group to all projects.

[Stephen Cunningham]

Hello

I have read through these comments but I haven't seen the answer to my problem as far as I can tell (you can correct me if Im wrong)! Our company has various projects with many issues on each project. One of our colleagues wants to watch issues that were created by another user. I have configured all issues so that he can watch every issue. However doesnt receive emails on new issues that are created under this project, just existing issues. Could you inform me how I can configure this so that he can receive emails on all new issues created please? P.S. We are using the OnDemand instance of Jira

Thanks

Stephen