Unsuccessful at getting custom fields in HTML email notifications

[Zelis APO]

We've been trying get custom fields to appear in our HTML email notifications, based on the information in this article, but have so far been unsuccessful:

Adding Custom Fields to Email

Thus far, we haven't seen any impact on the messages being sent, but my belief is that we've been editing the wrong files. The path for the templates mentioned in the article seems to only be referring to text email templates, but we're using HTML email notifications. 

I tried looking at the templates in atlassian-jira\WEB-INF\classes\templates\email\html, but they're so (obviously) radically different from the text templates that I'm not sure whether any of the information listed in that article still applies.

Has anyone been successful at using custom fields in HTML email notifications? If so, how did you go about it? (Disclaimer - I'm a systems admin, NOT a developer. I know what my custom field ID is, but beyond that, I'm fairly clueless about how these templates are constructed, so the more specifics you can include in your reply, the better). 

[Zelis APO]

Nic,

Thanks for the reply. Would you happen to have any examples of what you've done that you could share? I don't have any clue what "well-formed" would even look like, since I haven't been able to find any documentation on this whatsoever. 

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Examples I could give wouldn't help you - they'd look the same  (just as inscrutable) as the templates you are reading.  You need to understand the basics of html (I find https://www.w3schools.com/html/default.asp handy) and the templates - http://velocity.apache.org/engine/1.7/user-guide.html

[Zelis APO]

Thanks a bunch. I'll try going through those sites and then take another run at it. 

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Yes, many times.  HTML is more complex to generate, and it's not tolerant of errors - it has to be well-formed or your changes can be totally invisible.   But you've hit the right files and docs for it.

[Zelis APO]

Hi there - just checking in to see whether anyone has been successful at using custom fields in HTML email notifications. If so, I'd love it if you could share some of your knowledge, please.