Creating automatically generated links in JIRA emails

[Tanner Wortham]

We use a repository called Alien Brain at our office. I noticed out of the box that JIRA will auto-generate links that can be clicked and that takes the clicker directly to the file in the repository. The comments look like this:

However, when someone is tagged in a comment, the email they're provided doesn't auto-generate these same links. (See below.) Is there a way to make it create the same links in the corresponding emails?

[Moriah Chandler · Accepted solution]

After trying for awhile to figure out why the link in my comments field wasn't working, I gave up on that and installed JEditor as the renderer for both the description and comment fields. That gives me the option to add a link to an <other> protocol URL because it is HTML. This means the source for the link is: <a href ="link text">link URL</> This is super clunky IMO - way too many clicks - but using the Wiki Renderer for these fields wasn't working at all so it is better than nothing.

The issue commented email that results does have a clickable link to the file. You get a security warning in Outlook, but it lets you through (may be a user setting to turn this off). Once you click ok, it launches the AlienBrain client and takes you to the correct file location. It doesn't work for me in Gmail though.

Using this allows links to network files... HOWEVER, it does require installation of plugins for your browsers as local file linking is turned off by default in all of them these days for security reasons. (This last bit of info is for anyone who sees this in the future and expects it to work automatically.) See the comments on https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC/Working+with+Links for more info.

Tanner, can you tell me what renderer you are using for the comment field? Default Text, Wiki Renderer, some other one? I would love to be able to copy paste them and have them work even if the email doesn't.

[Kirill Bobrovskikh]

Hi Moriah,

We can add alienbrain:// protocol to the JEditor's link dialog. At least you won't need to type alienbrain:// each time.

If you have other ideas how to improve linking please feel free to contact our support.

[Moriah Chandler]

Wow! I heard you guys were on top of it, but this is truly impressive.

Would adding the protocol mean that the links would be auto translated into <a href> when cut/paste is used in the main window, without using the link dialog? If I paste http://www.google.com it knows its a link automatically - thats what I really want.

The link dialog is great when you want to specify target, etc. - very useful for the testing team for example, so the pages they are testing open in a new window.

For our game designers, I want it as simple as possible for them to trace their asset back to its source location from the associated jira issue, with the fewest number of clicks.

(BTW, JEditor is fantastic for lots of other reasons too and we will definitely be including it in our must-have list of addons...who wants to type wiki markup??)

[Kirill Bobrovskikh]

We have added this to JEditor. Link dialog now contains alienbrain:// protocol. If you paste a link alienbrain://something JEditor will convert it to link automatically. Changes will appear in JEditor 1.5.39+ (next release).

[Moriah Chandler]

Thank you Alex!! I will go to your page and add a review this very moment. Completely blown away by the level of support!

[Moriah Chandler]

I assume you mean the Wiki style renderer. That is odd. I would think it would be the other way around but alas, JIRA doesn't always make sense.

Thanks for posting this - I am sure someone else out there will need the answer too!

[Tanner Wortham]

@moriah, I figured out why mine was clickable and yours wasn't. My description field was a plain text JIRA field. When I turned it into a JIRA rich text field, the auto-created clickable links no longer showed as they did before.

[Tanner Wortham]

it was that way out of the box. we didn't adjust anything.

[Moriah Chandler]

I tried it out and the alienbrain link isn't clickable inside the comment (as it is in your image at the top of the thread)... did you create an application link between alien brain and jira to achieve this?

[Tanner Wortham]

I've found none, moriah. There's bound to be a way to make the links clickable, but I've yet to uncover it. If you run across something, be sure to post it as an answer!

[Moriah Chandler]

Me too, me too! Are there other ways you have found to make these two applications work together Tanner? Meaning, any kind of integration...

[Tanner Wortham]

i'm still poking around for a solution. anyone?

[Tanner Wortham]

> what links does it include?

http://, https://, file:// are the ones I've identified so far. There could be others.

> What event type is the notification that does not contain the information?

the assignment notification will auto-link appropriately. comment notifications and tagging, however, do not create the proper auto-link.

what i receive:

an email with a link (alienbrain://). however, this link is simply text and is not clickable. the screenshot below shows an example email of what i'm trying to fix. note that the link is not clickable:

what i want:

an email with a *clickable* link . the example email below shows what i want it to do with all alienbrain links it finds:

[Andy Brook [Plugin People]]

What links does it include? What event type is the notification that does not contain the information? it it just a comment notification?

From what I can see in sourcecode, if a user provides a comment including a url with a protocol, everything works (whatever protocol you provide), if it doesn't, it will default to a standard http:// link. Your received links default to...? A simple comment with an alienbrain:// protocol prefix seems to render as expected in an email.

The link rendering is done in Java, with I think, all roads ending at com.opensymphony.util.TextUtils.plainTextToHtml() --> hyperlink() --> linkURL() . But as yet Im not clear if a code change is needed. More details on what you receive and what youi want.

[Tanner Wortham]

I feel as though I've stumped the group. I'd like to feel this a great win to have the great minds of JIRA silenced, but nay. ;)

i did find that links are auto-created for at least http://, https://, file://. I'd like to find where it does this and make it also auto-create one for alienbrain://.

[Tanner Wortham]

Since i haven't yet got any assistance from the pros, I've been doing a bit more digging. Thus far, this lead looks promising:

https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRA/Customising+Email+Content

However, I haven't yet figured out what and where I need to edit to create something more than http:// and https:// links. (Specifically, i want alienbrain://[sometext] to be made clickable in emails received by our user base.)