JIRA sending multiple emails

shinyidol August 24, 2012

In the last week or so JIRA has been sending multiple emails for a single change, but these emails are spaced over time. Up to nine emails for a single change with the mails being sent out about 3 minutes apart from each other.

I've looked into the notification scheme and nothing it out of the ordinary. No groups in the scheme, no strange alias problems.

10 answers

0 votes
suchitk June 2, 2016

We are also facing the similar issue in JIRA version 6.4.6 , As multiple mails getting generated for a single change.

0 votes
mattkatz May 14, 2014

I am having a similar issue.

I am using 1 windows SMTP server which is an open relay server.

We connect unauthenticated to it.

I see the emails appearing in the outbound queue.

We see multiple emails for the same update _to the same person_. We see them a few minutes apart. These are the _exact_ same emails.

I can disable email, then flush the error queue, but when I restart emails I get the same issue again.

I have tried the following:

* Starting/Stopping JIRA

* Rebooting the server

* Applying all patches to plugins and making sure I'm on the latest version of JIRA

* Applying all windows updates.

* deleting the SMTP configuration entry and re-adding it.

_edited to clarify multiple emails to the same person_

Andy Brook [Plugin People]
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May 15, 2014

Multiple emails for a single event is quite normal, as JIRA queues mails for each recipient. If you look at the email headers, who is the recipient in each case? could it be that there is a group email address involved, which is being expanded, into individuals, which takes the extra time to deliver?

mattkatz May 15, 2014

Agreed - that would have been normal if they were each to a different person. I see multiple emails to the same person. 3-6 of them.

Andy Brook [Plugin People]
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May 17, 2014

OK, you have duplicate content, by definition they are probbaly 'not' the same email. The details in the mail header could provide hints as to why, other than what you see in a mail client, have you looked at them, there is a lot of info...

As you have an example issue, track every involved party, outside JIRA, mail each one, see if that triggers duplicates (ie if there is any mailserver forwarding or expansion of addressees going on).

Dave Hong May 18, 2014

Matthew: We ran into a similar issue - in our case, it turns out that our email server (Exchange) had a low timeout setting of some kind (I'm not sure since I'm not an admin for it).

JIRA thought that the notifications weren't being sent, so would continue to send them to our mail server, which was queueing them all this time.

mattkatz September 30, 2014

Sorry for the late reply - I think Dave had a great answer on this. I dealt with the timeout and then notifications were sent normally.

Christopher Gronde October 19, 2015

What exactly should the timeout be set to on the Exchange server?

0 votes
Dave Hong February 10, 2014

I'm running into this in JIRA 5.2.x, and all the emails are identical.

Andy Brook [Plugin People]
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February 11, 2014

Hey Dave,

Are you using the default JIRA outbound notification setup via Project and Notification Scheme or do you have another mail handler involved?

When do the emails occur, in relation to an update or a periodic notification?

The 'reporter' user, is that a single user address or more than one?

The notification scheme, for a given event type (eg ISSUE_COMMENTED) referes what Notification Scheme Entities (eg Reporter, Assignee, Watchers)? And who are they?

Dave Hong February 11, 2014

Andy, good questions.

The issues my team has been experiencing are like Collin's. A teammate will leave a comment on an issue, and everyone will get an email (like normal). Except sometimes we'll get the same email twice, or even three times, with no apparent rhyme or reason.

Whether it happens, or the time in-between emails, is inconsistent, and kind of maddening. :)

We haven't changed anything in our notification scheme for the last few months, or updated our instance of JIRA, so we're not sure why double-triple emails are occurring. This started happening maybe two weeks ago?

Andy Brook [Plugin People]
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February 12, 2014

The answer will lie in the email headers, who the email was addressed to, originally. It sounds like a helpful admin has perhaps added group email address somewhere, or is forwarding their mail on.

Dave Hong February 12, 2014

If I worked at a larger company, I'd think so, but I'm one of the few JIRA admins where I'm at. I'll rustle some bushes (including opening an actual support ticket with Atlassian) to get this mystery solved!

0 votes
Deleted user May 23, 2013

I have the same problem in version 5.x and today in v6.0. The email is sent to an individual user (email address and id). The same email is sent every two minutes at least 10 times …

0 votes
Renjith Pillai
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January 4, 2013

Have you added any group email address as an user in JIRA. Check the to address in the email and check whether it is showing the group id or the individual users id.

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Andy Brook [Plugin People]
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January 4, 2013

Are the emails identical? some notifications can be very close in content. When Jira sends out emails for a specific activitiy, they are fitlered such that for a given 'run' of notification for a specific event, a unique addressee will only receive at most _one_ notification email. If the user receives TWO emails, this is most likely caused a repeat edit of the remote user (for whatever reason) such that another event is triggered/processed. That this happens a few minutes apart seems to back that possibility.

Brian Lalonde March 14, 2018

Yes, identical messages. Only the headers differ.

From the headers of my five most recent duplicates, though, I notice this:

Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2018 16:05:00 -0800
Message-ID: <JIRA.31833.1520640253000.149.1520640300076@Atlassian.JIRA>
X-JIRA-FingerPrint: 4e17f4161e0becc3aa36b781c0491193


Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2018 16:06:00 -0800
Message-ID: <JIRA.31833.1520640253000.152.1520640360015@Atlassian.JIRA>
X-JIRA-FingerPrint: 4e17f4161e0becc3aa36b781c0491193


Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2018 16:07:00 -0800
Message-ID: <JIRA.31833.1520640253000.155.1520640420001@Atlassian.JIRA>
X-JIRA-FingerPrint: 4e17f4161e0becc3aa36b781c0491193


Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2018 16:08:40 -0800
Message-ID: <JIRA.31833.1520640253000.160.1520640520208@Atlassian.JIRA>
X-JIRA-FingerPrint: 4e17f4161e0becc3aa36b781c0491193


Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2018 16:09:40 -0800
Message-ID: <JIRA.31833.1520640253000.165.1520640580038@Atlassian.JIRA>
X-JIRA-FingerPrint: 4e17f4161e0becc3aa36b781c0491193

Same Jira fingerprint, but different message IDs and timestamps, so Jira is clearly re-sending the same message repeatedly.

0 votes
Terry King January 3, 2013

I am having the same issue with 2 different users on 5.0.6.

0 votes
Travis Falstad October 15, 2012

I am having this same issue. We are running 4.4.3. Thanks!

0 votes
Norman Abramovitz
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August 24, 2012

Do you have some user accounts sharing the same email address now?

0 votes
Norman Abramovitz
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August 24, 2012

Which version of Jira are you running?

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