Replies to external email are not captured as comments in Issue

[Gavin Klose]

GIVEN: A Jira automation sends a new comment from an Issue as an email to an external customer (who is defined as an email address via a custom field (Reporter Email)).

WHEN: The external customer receives the email (SUCCESS)

AND: The external customer replies to the email.

THEN: The reply email message creates a new comment in the Issue (FAIL)

What we have tried so far (we are using Jira Software (Cloud)):

Read these:

1. https://confluence.atlassian.com/jirakb/replying-to-email-notifications-from-the-automation-rule-to-be-added-as-comments-to-existing-issues-1255445743.html
2. https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Jira-Software-questions/Sending-amp-Receiving-emails-to-non-JIRA-users/qaq-p/2147330
3. https://support.atlassian.com/jira-service-management-cloud/docs/allow-external-emails-to-be-added-as-comments-on-issues/

Tried in my Jira Automation*: 

1. Included the Issue Key in the email subject (at the beginning, by itself, or within the subject with spaces around it).
2. Not included a custom reply-to email address (so it uses the default jira@XXXXX.atlassian.net)
3. Edited the notification email in Project settings (to WWL@...)

The current automation* is:

Trigger: Issue Commented > Comment is the main action

Condition: {{smart values}} condition:

First value: {{comment.internal}}

Condition: Equals

Second value: false

Then: Send email

To: {{customfield_10072}}  {{issue.Reporter Email}}

Subject: Update from {{issue.key}} - {{issue.summary}}

Content:

This comment has been added to the issue raised by you:

{{issue.comments.last.body}}

- {{issue.comments.last.author.displayName}}

Options:

From name: XXXX Service Desk

Reply to: jira@XXXXX.atlassian.net

[Mohanraj Thangamuthu]

Hello, Good day. Instead of responding to the email triggered by Automation for Jira, you can configure email notification from the project and respond to the email triggered by the notification scheme, this should help add the comment. 

[Gavin Klose]

Hi Mohanraj. Yes, in the notification scheme I can see options for:

• Watchers
• Current Assignee
• Reporter

Have I assumed correctly that "Reporter" in Jira Software cannot be an external (ie non-licensed Jira) users as we are using Jira Software (not Jira Service Management)? And a "Reporter" cannot be edited or manually entered.

If so this is how and why we have "hacked" our Reporter (as a custom field) and email notifications (as a Jira Automation).

Scenario 1: Issues are added from an external MS Form with PowerAutomation creating an Issue with includes a custom field "Reporter Email" because the forms are not being sent from licensed Jira users.

Scenario 2: Issues are created by a Jira user on behalf of an external reporter. The external reporter is entered as a custom field (see Scenario 1).

Scenario 3: When a comment is added, we have set up a Jira Automation to email the custom field "Reporter Email".

So if my assumptions and set-up is correct, then "Reporter" in the notification scheme is not relevant to our scenarios.

[Gavin Klose]

Hi @Mohanraj Thangamuthu . I dug a bit deeper into Notification settings and found that I might be able to add a Notifications role to a Custom field (?) - see pic. But I am limited to a choice of just 3 (and not our custom "Reporter Email"):

1. Initiative Link
2. Request Participants
3. Approvers
4.