This Knowledge Base serves as an additional detailed explanation on how JIRA ServiceDesk incoming mail and outgoing mail(notification) works. This structure only applies to JIRA ServiceDesk v2.5.x - v3.x.

Few key information need to be understood by JIRA ServiceDesk users:

Incoming Mail

1. JIRA ServiceDesk uses different incoming mail handler from the conventional JIRA mail handler
   1. JIRA ServiceDesk incoming mail handler (used by JIRA ServiceDesk customer)
   2. JIRA conventional incoming mail handler (used by JIRA Core/Software/ServiceDesk Agent)
2. JIRA ServiceDesk Customer and JIRA ServiceDesk Agent has separate configuration setup. JIRA ServiceDesk Agent is to be treated as JIRA's internal user(similar config as JIRA Core and JIRA Software users), while JIRA ServiceDesk Customer is handled solely on JIRA ServiceDesk.

Notification Mail

1. JIRA ServiceDesk Customer and JIRA Core/Software/ServiceDesk Agent uses the same outgoing mail (notification) handler, however, different notification configuration
   
   1. JIRA Service Desk Customer uses a default JIRA SD notification configuration as below(3).
   2. JIRA Core/Software/ServiceDesk Agent uses the notification scheme which you configured on the project side
2. You can differentiate the origin sender of the notification by looking at the format of the mail received:
   1. This is a notification coming from JIRA Service Desk
      
   2. This is a notification coming from JIRA
      
3. JIRA Service Desk Customer will only receive notification on below condition:
   
   
   1. JIRA ServiceDesk notification to customers cannot be modified. It is not configured in the configuration for JIRA's notification. Modifying these configurations will only change JIRA ServiceDesk Agent's notification config. 
   2. You can only configure this setup for your JIRA ServiceDesk customers : Configuring ServiceDesk notification
   3. A feature request regarding the capability to modify this notification, exist :  JSD-218 - Getting issue details... STATUS
      
      

Below is a use-case flow on how the incoming and outgoing notification works in JIRA Service Desk

JIRA Service Desk Incoming Mailbox : JSDMail@mail.com - This is configured at the email request configuration for ServiceDesk JIRA's Mailbox : JIRAMail@mail.com   JSD Customer sends a mail to JSDMail@mail.com to create an issue in JIRA ServiceDesk. The email is handled by JIRA ServiceDesk incoming mail handler and issue is created in JIRA ServiceDesk Project When there is an update to the issue, JIRA ServiceDesk Project will trigger JIRA's Outgoing mail handler (JIRAMail@mail.com) : The update can trigger an email notification which the sender will be showing as JIRAMail@mail.com. This will trigger to : Notification to JSD Agent Notification to the JSD Customer itself For JSD Agent, when they reply to this notification (to update the issue), their mail reply will go to JIRA's Incoming Mail Handler mailbox directly JIRAMail@mail.com. JIRA's Incoming Mail Handler will handle this mail and update the JIRA ServiceDesk issue accordingly However, for JSD Customer, when they reply to this notification (4B), it will go back to (1) where their mail reply will go to JSD Incoming Mail Handler mailbox JSDMail@mail.com . This is because for notification sent to customer which originates from JIRAMail@mail.com , it will have the reply-to in the mail as  JSDMail@mail.com (which routed the mail to the correct JSD mailbox)