Is there an easy way to avoid receiving emails from JIRA when I modify an issue?

A August 21, 2012

Hi, I think that JIRA shouldn't send me an email to notify me that I modified anything in an issue. I already know about it!

I don't find it very smart. Can I avoid this behaviour?

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Jobin Kuruvilla [Adaptavist]
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August 21, 2012

Go to user profile and uncheck the option to notify of your own changes.

You can do it globally from Administration > User preferences.

A August 21, 2012

thanks! This option should be enabled by default.

A August 21, 2012

@Nick really? I don't expect mails from myself when I do a change.

Nic Brough -Adaptavist-
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August 21, 2012

You can set it in the default user preferences.

Off the shelf, it's counter-intuitive - people testing a new installation will complain that they don't understand why they aren't getting email, but it is VERY useful to turn it off by default once your administrators know about it and can explain.

Nic Brough -Adaptavist-
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August 21, 2012

Then how do you test notifications on a new system (when you don't know that the system is hiding your own emails)?

It's immensely counter-intuitive - just look through the questions here - there's hundreds of "why aren't I getting emails?" answered by "you've turned off emails to yourself". People don't know about it, and don't understand it, so it's VERY sensible to start with them enabled.

A August 21, 2012

>>Then how do you test notifications on a new system (when you don't know that the system is hiding your own emails)?

you have a test email feature in JIRA :)

Nic Brough -Adaptavist-
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August 21, 2012

Er, no, you're completely missing the point. The test email tests the connection, not your schemes.

Let me rephrase it. If you do NOT know that the system is hiding emails to you that have been triggered by your issue changes, then how do you test your notification scheme is doing what it should be?

Look at the questions here. As I said, you will find hundreds of them about "I have set up a notification scheme that should be mailing me about an issue change. Why don't I get any emails?". This gets asked over and over because people have set the "do NOT email me on my own changes", and don't know it.

The only sane default setting is to mail people on their own changes, and let them turn it off when they grasp the idea.

A August 22, 2012

@Nic I disagree, I consider that telling you what you just did is not smart and useless. If you need to test something then that is a different problem. In that case you can use a second user (you are the admin anyway) and ultimately a more user-friendly admin panel.

Nic Brough -Adaptavist-
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August 22, 2012

Disagree all you want, but you're wrong.

There's been three more questions today alone proving that the "don't send email on my changes" flag is NOT well understood by people.

Please don't misunderstand - we totally agree that this is the right behaviour. It's intuitive and sensible to us. I'm not saying the flag is wrong, because it isn't - it's right.

What I keep telling you and you're really not understanding is the human side - it is NOT CLEAR to MOST people. Most humans expect to get emails when a notification scheme says "group X gets email when Y happens and I am in group X". It's counter-intuitive and misleading when they do not. They need to have it explained.

Your comment about testing also misses the point. I'm well aware of how to test a notification scheme as a second user, but it's the people who don't assume "I won't get email on my changes" who you're making life hard for. That would be the overwhelming majority.

Danny At Resolute August 22, 2012

It probably helps to understand why people want to get emails that they themselves have generated. There are a couple:

1) You have a record in your own email stream. It fills the blanks in the email "conversation".

2) You have confirmation that your action generated an email that went "out there".

Emails are fairly ephemeral things and generating extras doesn't bother me too much as long as I can filter for them. Being able to turn off self generated email is useful though, but you can't have it as a default. If people don't get the emails they will just assume the system doesn't do that and be grumpy. If they do get the emails and find them irritating then they will search and find the way to turn them off.

A August 23, 2012

@Nic @Daniel are you saying that a sensible collaboration system needs to notify users about what they just did? Now, if email is your collaboration system, then maybe I am in the wrong forum.

>>Most humans expect to get emails when a notification scheme says "group X gets email when Y happens and I >>am in group X". It's counter-intuitive and misleading when they do not. They need to have it explained.

That is not true about anybody in my company. We might not be humans according to you...

>> As I said, you will find hundreds of them about "I have set up a notification scheme that should be mailing me >>about an issue change. Why don't I get any emails?

I do agree that the notification scheme configuration screen should be more clear about this particular behaviour.

>>Emails are fairly ephemeral things and generating extras doesn't bother me too much as long as I can filter for them.

You would be surprised to know how difficult is to filter emails in Outlook. You can not use the "from" field as it only seems to only read the email address and not the 'name' and you can not use the body of the message as some actions don't have information about the person who triggered the change.

Finally, about emails: this was just published by Atlassian yesterday:

http://www.atlassian.com/time-wasting-at-work-infographic?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=infographicpage&utm_campaign=time-wasters-infographic

1 vote
Adolfo Casari
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August 21, 2012

This might be helpful to troubleshoot notifications:

JIRA Admin Helper

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