Documentation for JIRA 4.0. Documentation for other versions of JIRA is available too.

JIRA generates emails in reaction to events using a templating engine. The templating engine is Apache Jakarta's Velocity. This is a relatively easy to use templating language that can pull apart java objects in useful ways. The mails are generated inside JIRA by invoking Velocity with a set of objects of relevance to the event.

To customise email content, please follow this procedure.

  1. Open up your JIRA distribution, and navigate to the following paths:
    • Standalone: atlassian-jira\WEB-INF\classes\templates\email
    • Source: jira\src\etc\java\templates\email
    • WAR: webapp\WEB-INF\classes\templates\email
  2. Under this directory there are two directories, html and text. The html subdirectory contains the templates used to create emails in html, while the text directory the plain text mail outs. The templates are named after the event that will trigger the email.
  3. Bring the template up in your favourite text editor. Referring to the JIRA template documentation and Velocity Users Guide, make the customisations you want.
  4. Restart JIRA.

See also Adding Custom Fields to Email.



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