Email notifications not being sent/received when comments added

[Jack Brickey]

I'm hoping the community has some thoughts on this. The issue is escalating w/ some customers because the agents are not being notified when customers are commenting back answering our questions.

First let me state that I'm pretty sure that this was previously working and today I plan to look back thru emails to prove/dispel this claim.

Problem: Comments added do not result in notifications according to how Notifications are configured.

What I have checked:

1. I have a used Notification Helper which indicates that notifications should be sent.
2. I have looked over the notification scheme and everything looks correct
3. I have compared to my JSW projects, which work correctly, and things look similar.
4. I have done a number of tests and observed the following:
   1. Customers do receive and email notification for any public comments
   2. Assignee & Watchers DO NOT receive an email notification when a comment is added even though Notification Helper states they should

Any troubleshooting thoughts greatly appreciated!

[Jack Brickey · Accepted solution]

So I finally have the answer to the cause of my notification woes. It took 2+ weeks of working w/ Atlassian support before it was eventually escalated where relatively short work was made of the issue.

The problem was cause because I had my agents listed in a customer organization. My use case for JSD currently is for two projects both internal (IT Helpdesk and Facilities Helpdesk). I wanted my agents to be customers for these helpdesk projects. Example: a Facilities agent would be a customer of IT and vice versa. However, in so doing, the agents became 'JSD customers' resulting in the JSD notification scheme superseding JIRA SW Notification schemes. Not sure that is the right intended behavior but certainly is the resulting behavior. 

After removing all agents from the organization it appears that notifications are once again working.

Hope this helps others in the future.

[Joe Otis]

Thanks for posting this!  It could have easily been 2 weeks of investigation for us as well.  Definitely not something we would have thought to check on our own.

[Ash Hill]

Helped us out as well! Thanks for the solution!

[Dave Hollinden]

Jack, we experienced the same symptoms and found the same solution, removing agents from the organization. But how did you handle that moving forward? We have a number of JSD projects for which we'd like to use an internal organization, but they all have different agents. Seems like we'd need to create an organization specifically for each project, or remove all agents across all projects from the organization. Both seem undesirable. 

Thanks, 

Dave

[Sylvain Gourvil]

You made my day !

[JiraYo]

ouch yes we recently 2 months ago, implemented an "organization" to solve some problems. At some point we realized we havent been getting notifications properly. This explains it perfectly.

We have used organizations because we want everyone to be able to see "other organizational work orders" on the front end. So for instance, people can see that the copier is being worked on and I dont get 5 "copier needs support!" work orders created.

I am going to test this and may end up calling atlassian about it as this is a supported and recommended feature, organizations, but obviously if it breaks notifications we cant have that. People really complain when they are not notified for instance by of a comment.

I am curious whether atlassian has this as a bug already and are working to fix it or they thought it was just a one off with you. Any other work around that gives me front end visibility for agents on other work order sites (without making them an agent on that work order site) would be great.

[Dave Hollinden]

Here's a JSDSERVER ticket that was opened when I worked with Atlassian support on this problem.

https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JSDSERVER-5797

I mentioned in the above ticket, and I think it's worth noting, that if your Customer Permissions are set so that

"Who can raise requests?" = "Customers who have an account on this JIRA site"

then agents are automatically removed from the customers list by Service Desk. So Atlassian is aware of the conflict and prevents it in this situation. 

But if you are using Organizations and your agents are included in your organization, then agents are not automatically from the customer list. And this leads to the problem we've all experienced here. 

[JiraYo]

We have removed the agents from the organization, "fixing" the issue. I put in a bug with atlassian and referenced this article. we also turned off the automation rule that was adding anyone who put in a work order to the organization group.

I am not super optimistic that they will fix this in a timely fashion, as you have some bugs that have hundreds of people watching them, not being solved, and our little bug only has 4 people watching it. Despite it making organizations virtually unusable (given the choice between front end work order visibility for customers, and not receiving any notifications, we of course would prefer notifications going out to agents...)

It has seriously harmed the reception of the new work order systems as well, because agents were always complaining that they dont see new work orders or work order comments. So in my mind, its a huge deal, but maybe not enough people use organizations to make it into a big deal for everyone. Still this was first noticed in 2016 by the OP, it would be nice if it was fixed soon.

[mdoege]

Helped us out as well too! Thanks for the solution!

[Carolynn_Carriger]

Thanks! I think this is what was messing me up too--I was the only primary agent also listed as a customer. Trying it out but fingers crossed :) 

[JiraYo]

So I have just worked around this today. The problem was that  we want to auto add the organization to all work orders, for visibility, however if we turn that on, agents are also added to the organization breaking emails.

What i have done, was i have modified the "project automation" rule under project settings. One of the default rules, which was creating the problems, is "set organization using reporter's email domain". So we had to disable that a while ago.

To replace that rule, simply create a new rule that has the following settings:

• Create a new rule under project rules
• Trigger = Issue Created, then New Action → Edit Issue. Set the field to set as "organizations". Set the organization to 'MY ORG' from the dropdown. Uncheck the box that says "this rule should send emails".
• Go to details and give it a name like "Set organization on new work orders". Set owner to your own name. Set actor to "SYSTEM", and save the rule. ( i always add a system account to our WO systems, it doesnt matter what you admin you set here...)

You then also need to turn off "organization added" under customer notifications or everyone will get spammed with this addition of the org.

You also need to add the organization manually from the customer icon and then add organization.

The old rule automatically added the org, but this new one does not. so the rule will fail unless you add the org. For some reason, not taking the org from the email domain does NOT add the user to the organization! even though nothing specifically is saying to add the user to the org, it does seem  to be happening for us.

[Rosana Casilli]

Hi Jack! @Jack Brickey  I think i am facing the same issue. 

We have an organization that is cross to other projects (this was set by the other administrator) at the begining it all seems to work: Customer were only customer and agents were all agents. But then, some customers in the organization, were customers in some project and agent in their own project. So how can I manage that?

Thansk in advance

[Jack Brickey]

that is precisely what you must watch out for. in this case you need to separate the organization into two orgs (per project) so that you don't run into contamination.

[Rosana Casilli]

Okay.. So I need to explit organizations per project and not global.

It will be a huge work.. 

Thanks

[Jack Brickey]

what you need to ensure is that an Agent in any given project is not also a Customer in the same project. How you ensure that depends on you situation. But, if this is happening because of a cross-project organization then you need to extract the agent from that org OR decouple the org from the project.

[David Willson]

THANK YOU FOR POSTING THIS! WOW.

[Frank Vasconcelos]

 I just put the user (who I want to received the notification that an specific status is completed)  as a watcher and this resolved my problem, I hope that this comment could be helpful , excuse my english.  

[Jack Brickey]

I wanted to keep this issue up-to-date. I have been working w/ Atlassian for 1+ weeks now on this. I have finally determined that the issue is only associated w/ issue created via the Portal & Email. If the issue is created from within JSD itself then the notifications work. Smoking gun...now for the root cause?

[Greg Mora]

Were you able to resolve this? It appears we are experiencing the same issue. 

[Jack Brickey]

@Greg Mora, the answer to my issue is captured here and signified by the green checkmark. If that is not your issue I recommend posting a new question though there are a ton of "notification issue" threads out there and I go as far to say that is likely the #1 asked topic. So, peruse the Community to possible answers.

[Tibor Hegyi _META-INF_]

Hi,

Please note that JSD notifies customers via its own notification system, while the Notification Scheme (and Helper) controls notifications for JIRA users (agents, collaborators).

JSD Notifications may be turned on/off, in Administration / Applicaitons / Service Desk / Configuration.

Is JSD notification enabled?

Concerning assignee and watchers, isn't possible that you tested watchers with your account and your profile has "My changes: do not notify me"?

Tibor

[Jack Brickey]

Tibor,

thanks for your quick response! The only options I see in JSD Configuration for notifications is associated with whether 'customers should receive JIRA notifications'. I have "No, only send JIRA Service Desk notifications to customers (recommended)" checked. However, I don't think this is aligned w/ my scenario. My issue is not that customers are not receiving email notifications but that agents and watchers are not receiving them. 

BTW, the other option was "Yes, send customers both JSD and JIRA notifications".

[Jack Brickey]

Regarding the last comment, I'm going to look at this more carefully. I have been working with one of my agents for this very reason as it has bitten me before. Regardless, I know for sure, in a real-world scenario that my customers are commenting back on tickets and the assignee/watcher do not receive notifications.

[Jack Brickey]

I have ruled out that my observations are somehow related to me making the comments and not receiving notifications. Notifications are not being sent to assignee or any watchers when a comment is added. the only users that are receiving notifications are Customers when we post a public comment. I also verified that this used to work a couple of weeks back. I have a ticket open w/ Atlassian.