Is there a way to distinguish between comments that were created on an issue via email and comments that were manually entered into the issue?

[Becky Rotoloni]

I want to send a notification to a non-jira user when an issue is commented via Email this issue. 

When the initial email comes in the non-JIRA user's email address is saved in a custom field.  When comments are created on the issue via email responses, I want to send a notification to the address in the custom field.  Is there a way to distinguish between comments that were created on an issue via email and comments that were manually entered into the issue?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Accepted solution]

No, a comment is a comment, there's no information stored about how the comment was made.

If you want to distinguish between them, you'll need to code for a flag on the comments, and add something in the "email this issue" plugin to set the flag.  If it's just about the notification and the information about how it was created is not really that important, then you'll only need to get the plugin amended to send when needed.

[Becky Rotoloni]

How would I code for a flag on the comments? I am trying to set up communication between our customer support person and a non-jira user using "email this issue". I want customer support to be able to communicate among themselves by adding comments manually into the ticket, and communicate to the non-jira user via email. Is there another way to do this other than trying to distinguish between how the comments was created? If I could control who the "auto-reply" to comment email goes to then I could use this and set it to the user in the custom field. But I don't see any way to do this.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

You'd need to write a plugin to add the facility to tag comments (which, I don't think is an easy plugin to write), and you'll need to re-write the "email this issue" function as well. The significantly easier option would be to write a new email handler - one that essentially duplicates the current behaviour, but also has some code to send out the additional email.

[Becky Rotoloni]

Is there a way to tell the email handler who to send the auto-reply to? If I could just get it to auto-reply to the custom field (which has the customer saved in it) then I would be good. Right now it only auto-replies to the sender of the email.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

If you're coding your own handler, then there should be, yes. I've not tried it myself, but I think it's possible.

[Becky Rotoloni]

We are using the Email this Issue handler and haven't made any code changes to it. We are just setting it up using the fields provided. Do we have access to the code?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

I don't think you do - I assume you're using JETI? You'll need to raise an issue with them (although I have a nagging doubt that they do actually support this already)

[Becky Rotoloni]

ok, I will open a ticket with them.