Make multiple changes to an issue before saving

[David Griffin]

We have a JIRA 7.0 server system which is being used across our development and engineering teams. I have configured email notifications such that emails are sent for creation of new issues and changes to existing issues. However, we are finding that whilst a user is editing an issue (updating comments, attaching files etc.), each change they make generates a separate email notification, meaning that other users can see several email notifications for changes to a single issue within a matter of minutes. It would be preferable if there were a way to make multiple changes to an issue (and be able to preview what the updated issue would look like - very useful when you are using comment text formatting for example) before saving/applying the changes and then this resulted in a single email notification to report the changes that had been made (e.g. comment updated, file(s) attached, priority changed etc.). Is this already possible (of is there some way we set email notifications to avoid the multiple email scenario)? If not this would be an excellent improvement to the useability IMO.

[David Griffin]

Jason, thanks for the suggestions.

• Perhaps is an element of user training would help, but I think the JIRA user interface implementation is mostly the problem. When you are creating an issue, JIRA allows you make multiple changes, before committing them. When editing an existing issue however, JIRA seems to handle this differently and if the user adds/modifies a comment, then a notification is sent (if configured appropriately), if they then add an attachment (which has to be done as a separate action), another notification is sent, if they then change the priority, another notification is sent and so on. Each modification is committed the moment you move away from the field you are modifying.
• I can't seem to find how JIRA can be configured to send "once-per-day" emails, can you point me in the right direction?

[Jason Friedman]

We have run into this issue, too, and have come up only with these low-tech solutions:

• JIRA usage at your organization probably follow the pareto rule:  20% of the people are making 80% of the changes.  Train those 20% to make all their edits at once.
• Reduce your email notification settings and use once-per-day subscriptions instead.