Managing service desk notifications

When customers submit a request through the customer portal, they receive notifications to keep them informed of their request's progress. We call these service desk notifications.

Jira platform notifications are different. When agents and admins work on issues inside of Jira Service Desk, they receive notifications about all of an issue's activity through the Jira platform. Admins can configure Jira platform notifications through each project's notification scheme.

On this page:

How different roles receive notifications

A service desk project sends notifications based on two schemes: one for your customers and one for your licensed users, most likely your agents and admins.

CustomersAgents and admins

When a customer submits a request, they receive our default email notifications as the issue reporter or participant.

Customers in an organization receive notifications when other members of the organization share requests with the organization. They must opt in to notifications to see other activity on the request.

Approvers receive service desk notifications when a request transitions to a stage where their approval is needed. They must opt in to notifications to see other activity on the request.

All other customers receive notifications for all public activities on the requests they're involved with.

Customers can opt in or out of a request's notifications in the customer portal or email. Reporters who opt out are only notified when the request is resolved.

When agents and admins work on an issue, they receive email notifications as part of the the project's Jira notification scheme. Read more about the Jira notification scheme.

Agents don't receive notifications of their own changes when they act as a customer on issues with a set request type. Agents acting as a reporter, participant or approver on these issues are always treated as a customer, regardless of the settings in their project's Jira notification scheme.

Edit, disable, and customize notifications

To edit the recipients or message content of your service desk notifications:

  1. From your project's sidebar, select Project settings > Customer notifications.
  2. Select Edit next to the notification you wish to alter.

To disable a notification, untick the Enable checkbox while editing.

tip/resting Created with Sketch.

Pro tip: To create custom email triggers, go to Project setting > Automation and create a new custom rule. Set up your triggers and use the "send email" THEN action.

 

Choose recipients

Add at least one of the following to the To field:

Recipient optionsDetails
Reporter (customer)

The reporter of the request.

This notification is sent even if the reporter has opted out of receiving notifications on the customer portal.

Customers involved

All customers involved on the request, including the reporter and request participants.

This notification is not sent to customers if they have turned off notifications for an individual request in the portal or a request's email thread.

Added participantsThe people who have been added as request participants.
Added organizationsThe people in an organization that the request has been shared with.
ApproversThe people who need to approve or decline a request.
Exclude person who caused the actionPrevents the person who triggered the rule from receiving a notification. For example, if a customer adds a comment to a request, you can choose to exclude them so they don't receive a notification about their own comment.

Include issue information using message variables

You can use variables to pull blocks of information from issues and insert them into your message. Select the Insert variable drop down menu to add valid variables for the notification you're customizing.

NameFormatDescription
Recipient name

${recipient.name}

The full name of the person receiving the email.
Name of person who caused the action${event.user.name}The full name of the person who triggered the notification, for example by adding a comment.
Issue summary${issue.summary}The summary of the issue, or blank if there is none.
Issue description${issue.description}The description of the issue, or blank if there is none.
Issue key${issue.key}The issue key (e.g. IT-123).
Issue reporter${issue.reporter.name}The full name of the user that reported the issue.
Issue resolution${issue.resolution}The resolution of the issue, for example "done".
Request URL${request.url}The URL of the request in the customer portal.
Comment${comment}

The comment added to the issue.

This is only available using the "Comment added" or "Comment edited" WHEN trigger.

Request status${request.status}

The customer-visible status of the request, as shown on the Customer Portal.

Portal name${portal.name}The portal name, which can be edited on the Portal settings page.

Support additional languages and translations

Provide translations and regional messages to your service desk's customers. To add or remove a language to your service desk project:

  1. Go to Project settings Customer notifications.
  2. Under Language support, select Manage languages.

The languages your service desk supports appear in the table. You can add any languages that your site supports.

We disable new languages by default. When you add a language, your service desk introduces translated notification messages and templates from our default style. Take your time customizing and adjusting these before you decide to enable a language.

If your customer prefers a language that isn't supported in your service desk, they receive notifications in the project's default language.

Translate customer notifications

When creating your message: 

  1. Select a language from the drop down.
  2. Add your translations into the content area, including any relevant variables. 

If you leave translations blank, your service desk sends notifications in your instance's default language.

Customize your subject line

Your service desk puts a default subject line on all customer notifications. To change your service desk notifications' subject line:

  1. Go to Project settings > Customer notifications.
  2. Select Edit templates.
  3. Under Subject, edit your subject line.

We require you keep the issue key someplace in your subject line. This helps thread a request's notifications into a single email conversation.

Style notifications with HTML, CSS, and plain text templates

To change the look and feel of your email notifications:

  1. Go to Project settings > Customer notifications.
  2. Under Templates, select Edit templates.
  3. Adjust the HTML, CSS, and plain text styles as you like.

You can create different styles for different languages using the drop down. 

Include more information using template variables

Similar to the variables you can add to individual notification messages, use this set of variables to pull blocks of information and add it to your email template.

NameFormatDescription
Message content${message.content}The content of your notifications. We require this variable. This variable includes batched messages.
Request location

${request.url}

The URL of the request.
Disable notifications location

${request.disable.notifications.url}

The URL to turn off notifications for the request. As a best practice, we recommend always including this link.
List of request viewers

${request.sharedwith}

The participants, approvers and customer organizations who can also view the request.
Help center name

${helpcenter.name}

The name of your site's help center, an entry point to all customer portals on your site.
Jira Service Desk homepage${atlassian.url}The URL of Jira Service Desk's homepage.

Target additional default CSS classes

You can style more classes than appear in the default template.

NameClassDescription
Reply marker.jsd-reply-markerThe style of the reply marker. This series of dashes and hyphens is used to process comments when a customer replies to a notification.
Batched item container

.jsd-activity-item-content

The style of a division used to wrap individual messages added to a batched notification.
Batched message separator.jsd-activity-item-separatorThe style of a separator inserted when batches of messages are sent as a single notification.

Choose HTML or plain text

As a Jira administrator, you can set the default email type for all notifications sent by you site. If the default type is set to HTML, dual-encoded notifications are sent, allowing your customers to then select the HTML or plain text view in their mail client. If your customers use a plain text mail client, you can change your default setting and apply it to new and existing customers.

  1. Choose  > System
  2. Scroll down to the User Interface section and choose Default User Preferences.
  3. Select Edit default values
  4. Change the Default outgoing email format to HTML or text and click Update.
    At this point, the email format you have selected will only be applied to new service desk customers. If you also want to override the email format chosen by existing service desk customers and agents:  
  5. Under Operations, select Apply
  6. Select Update to finish applying the email preference to all user accounts. 
Last modified on Mar 12, 2018

Was this helpful?

Yes
No
Provide feedback about this article
Powered by Confluence and Scroll Viewport.