Default Issue Type and Project Mapping not working for "Outlook Integration for JIRA" plugin when email is in draft status

[adam lloyd]

Hi there.

Currently having an issue with the "Outlook Integration for JIRA" plugin where the Default Issue Type and Project Mapping features do not seem to work properly when attempting to create a JIRA ticket from an email in draft status. The plugin instead chooses the first project and issue type from the plugin's drop down menus (I've already confirmed that this functionality works fine when creating a JIRA from an email in either my Inbox of Sent Items).

Can you please advise if there's a way to work around this issue? While I could normally create the JIRA ticket after sending the email, I want to use the draft email as a way of creating a JIRA ticket with the body of the email preserved as an attachment inside the JIRA (rather than the plugin's default MO of copying full email contents inside the JIRA ticket description).

Case I'm working with is as follows:

1)Select an email from my Inbox that I want to create a JIRA ticket to track

2)Prepare to forward that email as an attachment using Outlook shortcut Ctrl+Alt+F (original email contents are now preserved as an attachment in the new email)

3)Enter the desired JIRA Description in the body of the draft email

4)Use the "Outlook Integration for JIRA" plugin on the draft email to create a JIRA ticket to track the original email. The expectation is that the created JIRA ticket will contain the body of the original email as an attachment, with a JIRA description matching the body of the forwarded email

5)Discard the forwarded email rather than sending it

Right now the above case is working almost perfectly, except for the fact that I need to manually select the Issue Type and Project each time.

[catworkx GmbH]

The next version will include:

1) Configuration of the attachment's file name, either <subject>.<fileExtension> or <date>_<sendersMail>.<fileExtension>

2) Configuration, either the description will be embedded or left blank.

3) Shortcuts like Control-A are working now

We will add a comment here after the version has been released.

[adam lloyd]

Feedback below:

1) From a user perspective I would expect attachment functionality to be uniform (ie if I attach an email to a JIRA ticket manually I see the original name of the email on the attachment). When I see the email being renamed when it's auto-attached to the JIRA I instantly start wondering what else may have been altered in the email, and this is especially a concern if a group is using JIRA as a ticketing system for audit purposes.

2) From my perspective a user will either want to embed the email contents in the JIRA description by default or will want to start from a blank slate so they can add their own commentary. Assuming this holds true for other users I think it would make sense to have this option configurable to reflect a user's preferences vs a manual "clear" button I would need to hit every time I try to create a JIRA from email.

With regards to addressing other use cases that may arise, might I suggest ensuring that functionality like "Ctrl + a" to select all contents in the JIRA body section of the plugin interface is enabled to ensure that users can quickly select and edit the contents of this section?

[catworkx GmbH]

1) Well, the name of the attachment is up to the implementation. We preferred the sender's mail address and the timestamp. We will make it configurable to also use the subject of an e-mail in a future release.

2) We did not implement it yet. Even though I currently think about a button to clear the description might be more applicable and covers different use cases instead of having an option in the configuration. What do you think about this?

[adam lloyd]

Thank you kindly.

Just had a chance to try the updated plugin, and while the new attachment functionality is usable, I'm having some issues with the following elements:

• When option to attach original email to the JIRA is checked, the filename of the attachment is not reflecting the original title of the email (which I believe is default behavior when attaching files to JIRA). It looks like the plugin is using some combination of the date/time and user's email address to name the attachment in the JIRA currently.
• Still not seeing an option to configure whether the plugin copies the body (text) of the email into the description field of the JIRA ticket it creates - was this going to be integrated into a subsequent version of the plugin, or is this tied into the existing plugin options somehow?

[catworkx GmbH]

We just released v1.6.0. You can add the e-mail as attachment now. You can also decide between various file formats:

• Outlook MAPI (.msg)  - incl. attachments

• MAPI RFC822 (.eml) - incl. attachments

• Microsoft Word (.doc)

• Text (.txt)

• HTML (.html)

• Richtext (.rtf)

Download: https://plugins.extern.catworkx.de/display/O2J/Downloads

[catworkx GmbH]

Yes, we will add this to the feature list as well. As soon we implemented the attaching of .msg-files, we will add a comment here.

[adam lloyd]

Also, would it be possible to add a check box to configure whether the plugin copies the body (text) of the email into the description field of the JIRA ticket it creates? I've found it's alot easier reading through a one sentence JIRA description vs wading through the full email contents in the JIRA description.

[adam lloyd]

Thanks! That would be quite useful. Would you be able to confirm when this new feature would be available?

[catworkx GmbH]

The reason why the mapping does not work for draft mails is, that the mapping uses the the sender's mail address. As long as the mail is still a draft the sender's mail address is empty.

But to support the workflow described above, we will add the feature to attach the mail as attachment (.msg) in the default "Create issue" dialog. Then the project mapping will work as usual.