Configuring email notifications
Jira can send email notifications to users when significant events occur. For example, you can get notified when an issue is created or completed, or when any of the issue fields is updated.
For all of the following procedures, you must be logged in as a user with the Jira Administrators global permission.
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Enabling notifications
To start the notifications flowing, you'll need to set up an SMTP mail server, and create a notification scheme in which you choose the notifications you'd like to get.
You can also customize your email content, and configure the email address from which notifications are sent.
Batching notifications
As you've probably noticed by now, email notifications can get... overwhelming. By default, every issue update is sent in a separate email, and these might really pile up after some time. To avoid that, you can batch events that occurred in a similar time frame, and receive them in a single email, which looks like the one below:
You will receive a separate email for every issue. An email like that groups events that occurred in this issue within the last 10 minutes, and contains the following updates:
- Changes to any of the issue fields
- Comments
- Work logs
- Attachments
- Updates that a new issue has been created.
Batching email notifications is useful when many events occur close together, for example when you do bulk updates, or when your teammates create issues and fill them in in one go.
Mentions
When you're mentioned in an issue, it usually means that somebody needs your immediate attention, that's why you'll be notified as soon as possible. All mentions from the last minute will be grouped together and delivered to your mailbox in a separate email.
Custom fields
You will also be notified about changes to custom fields in your issues, just like in the case of regular fields. However, if you're an advanced Jira user, you can display additional custom fields in your emails. Such custom fields can be added to email's subject, header, footer, or any other location. For more info, see Adding custom fields to emails.
Customer notifications in Jira Service Desk
Jira Service Desk has an additional set of notifications, which we call customer notifications. These notifications are designed to keep the customers informed about progress on particular tickets without disclosing information about internal processes, and usually include responses to customers, customer-visible changes, approvals, or requests being shared with individuals or organizations.
These notifications won't be batched — every notification is sent in a separate email after an event occurs.
That's awesome! How do I turn this on?
Batching of emails is disabled by default. To enable batching of email notifications:
- Go to
> System > Batching email notifications (you can also search for it by pressing 'gg'). - Click the toggle to enable this feature. It will be applied to all users.
Limitations
- If you modified email templates to add some custom content to your emails, you will need to reapply your changes, because batched notifications are based on different Velocity templates. For more info, see Customizing email content.
Configuring a project's email address
You can configure an email address for your project, which will work as the address that notifications are sent from - the ‘sender address’. This email address will also serve as the reply address for responses.
This setting is specific to the selected project, and won’t affect the configuration of other projects, or the default ‘sender address’ of your SMTP mail server.
To configure a project’s email address:
- Choose > Projects, and select a project.
- Locate the Notifications section, and click the pen icon next to the email address.
- Enter a valid email address, and click Update.
Notifications about issues from this project will now be sent from the new email address. If you ever wanted to change it back to the default address from your SMTP server, complete the same steps but leave the email address blank.
Email recipients
For each event notification, Jira will only send the first encountered email intended for a recipient. Hence, in the case where a user is included in two or more recipient lists (e.g. the Project Lead and current reporter) for one event notification, the user will only receive the first encountered email notification. Jira will log the fact that this user was on multiple recipient lists.
Jira can send email notifications to users when significant events occur, (e.g. creation of an issue; completion of an issue).
Note: For all of the following procedures, you must be logged in as a user with the Jira Administrators global permission.
Jira's default setting is to not notify users of their own changes. This can be changed on a per user basis via their profile preferences.
Email format: HTML or text
Each Jira user can specify in their profile preferences, whether to send outgoing emails in either text or HTML format. Jira Administrators can specify a default email format by going to > User Management > User Preferences.
The HTML email format can accommodate internationalized words in the 'Issue Details' section. However, due to Internet Security Settings, which prevent images from being automatically downloaded, the HTML email messages may not be correctly formatted. For example, the summary column on the left may appear too wide. You can correct the formatting by accepting to download these images (this option should be available in the email).
Troubleshooting notifications
Using the Jira admin helper
The Jira admin helper can help you diagnose why a user isn't receiving email notifications when they should be, or why a user is receiving email notifications when they shouldn't be. This tool is only available to Jira administrators.
To diagnose why a user is or is not receiving notifications for an issue:
- View the issue in Jira.
- Click Admin > Notification Helper.
- Enter the username of the user.
- Click Submit.
You can also access the Notifications Helper by going to > System > Notification Helper.