Jira Service Desk updating issue's comment with email reply

[Priska Aprilia]

We do not allow email submission from email. Customers need to raise an issue via Customer Portal. However they will receive an email notification confirming their request.

When Customer replies to the email notification email thread, we would like to capture the email as a comment in the issue.

When I replied to one of the email thread of an issue, my email is not captured as a comment in JSD. I expected this is the default behavior of JSD even though we do not enable the request by email.

How can we capture Customer's email reply on an issue as a comment in that issue?
Can we use the email handler?

[Joe Caiafa]

@Earl McCutcheon  I am currently using the workaround mentioned in your response above where I created a hidden request type and it's own workflow that emails the customer to use the portal and then automatically closes the request. One of the problems I have encountered is that it is confusing to the customer. Especially since we have customer satisfaction turned on. First the customer gets an email that they need to use the portal. Shortly after, they receive an email that a request was created (due to our notification scheme) and that it was closed. They also receive a satisfaction notification.

I had a thought. Maybe creating a transport rule on the Exchange server to reply to and delete any emails to (one of) our JIRA Service Desk email address that doesn't contain the characters that match issue types. A question for you on mail handling. Is there any documentation on what exactly JIRA is "looking" for in an email to know that it is related to an existing issue? Does it look for a pattern or an exact match of the issue number? Is there any documentation you can point me to regarding this?

Thanks!

Joe

[Earl McCutcheon]

Hi Priska,

To have the ability to add comments to a request by email you also have to have the ability to create issue by email as well.

Details on the configuration can be seen in "Receiving requests by email".

Regards,
Earl

[Priska Aprilia]

Hi Earl,

Thank you for your reply.

We have tried two options for this requirements as follow

1. Enabling the Email Handler function of JIRA

As per our testing, we enabled the Email Handler feature to handle the Inbound Email from a specific mailbox. There are few permissions to provide for "Customers" in the permission scheme in order for the emails to be pushed through JSD as a comment (e.g. ability to create comment & ability to create attachment).
We managed to capture the email reply from Customer on an issue thread as a comment in JSD. However the issue here is that the comment from email reply is tagged as "Internal Comment" rather than a public one. It seems to be a default behavior of Jira that we do not have any option to change from the application interface.
The only problem here the email reply from Customer on the issue email thread is tagged  comment is tagged an "Internal Comment". 

2. Enabling the email request
Our ultimate goal is that we do not want Customers to send a request via email but we want them to be able to reply to the request email notification thread and convert the reply to JSD comment.

We did a workound as follow:
2.1 We enabled the email request

2.2 We created a filter in our mailbox. This filter moves all the inbound emails in which the subjects have no our JSD project key reference to another folder. So in our main mailbox, we only have those emails with the subjects refer to our JSD project key. Therefore, JSD will only update the existing issues with the email replies.

The option #2 seems do the trick.

Disclaimer: 
We are using Jira Service Desk Server where the email configuration is under our control.

[Earl McCutcheon]

Hi Priska,

Thanks for the info on the workaround you found.  And I did a bit of digging and found a feature request for this as well that I would recommend adding a vote, to help us track continued interest in implementation:

• https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JSDSERVER-3697

The Feature request links to the following KB with an alternate workaround that may also work for you:

• Configuring mail channel for comments only

And for some follow up on your point for enabling the mail handler in jira the behavior you noted is intended behavior as the internal mail handler is not designed to process the external notifications for customer requests only internally licensed users, and the email processor in Service Desk was designed to fill the gap based on logical indicators of the accounts, and is touched on in the Receiving requests by email service Desk documentation, noting the following:

Customer requests and comments are processed differently thanJira mail. Issues created via Jira email handlers don't show up as service desk customer requests. For this reason, we don't recommend using a Jira mail handler for service desk projects.

Regards,
Earl

[Nick Lor]

Hi Priska, 

@Priska Aprilia Jumping in a bit late here, but could you elaborate on what steps you did to implement the below?

2.2 We created a filter in our mailbox. This filter moves all the inbound emails in which the subjects have no our JSD project key reference to another folder. So in our main mailbox, we only have those emails with the subjects refer to our JSD project key. Therefore, JSD will only update the existing issues with the email replies.

Does this mean you created a rule within Outlook/Your Email Client itself? Does enabling the email request mean it only acts on emails within the main folder by default or is there a way you have to configure it?

Thanks,

-Nick

[Priska Aprilia]

Hi @Nick Lor

Does this mean you created a rule within Outlook/Your Email Client itself?

Yes. Your understanding is correct.

Does enabling the email request mean it only acts on emails within the main folder by default or is there a way you have to configure it?

I did a quick check on the email channel configuration on JIRA Service Desk 4.10.0 (server). If we see the screenshot for the configuration below we seem not be able to define which folder we want JSD to monitor. It means, JSD will read the main folder/inbox. I am not sure if it's still the case in the newer version or Data Center one.

Hope this helps.

[Nick Lor]

Thanks @Priska Aprilia that does help.

-Nick