Users will often want to get progress updates on their issues after they have logged them. So, instead of business users having to ask for updates, we will proactively update them through our newly acquired knowledge, that is, JIRA notifications.
In Chapter 4, Field Management, we added a custom field called Escalation List, which allows users to add who else will receive notifications along with the issue's reporter and assignee.
The other customization we have made in Chapter 6, Workflows and Business Processes, is the addition of new transitions in the workflow. We need to make sure those transitions fire appropriate events and also send out notifications. In summary, we need to do the following:
- Send out notifications for the new custom events fired by our custom workflow transitions
- Send out notifications to users specified in our Escalation List custom field
While you can achieve both using other JIRA features, such as adding users as watchers to the issue and reusing existing JIRA system events, this exercise will explore the options available to you. In later chapters, you will see there are other criteria to consider while deciding on the best approach.
The first step to enable e-mail communication, as you will have guessed, is to register mail servers in JIRA. If you are using the standalone distribution of JIRA, it is recommended that you add your mail server by entering the host information:
- Log in to JIRA as a JIRA administrator.
- Browse to the JIRA administration console.
- Select the System tab and then the Outgoing Mail option.
- Click on the Configure new SMTP mail server button.
- Enter in your mail server information.
After adding your mail server, you can try sending yourself a quick test e-mail to see if JIRA is able to access your server successfully.
In Chapter 6, Workflows and Business Processes, we created two new workflow transitions. One is for the Help Desk staff to request additional information from the business user and another for the business user to supply the requested information. What you need to do now is create custom events for the transitions when they are executed:
- Browse to the View Events page.
- Go to the Add New Event section at the end of the page.
- Name the new event Info Requested.
- Provide a description for the event—
This is the request information event. - Select the Issue Updated template.
- Click on the Add button to create the new event.
With your event created, you now need to update your workflow so that your transitions can fire the correct event:
- Browse to the View Workflows page.
- Click on the Edit link for Help Desk Workflow.
- Click on the Request for Info transition.
- Update the post function to fire our Info Requested event rather then the Generic Event.
- Publish the draft workflow. You can save a backup copy in case you want to revert back.
In this case, you can reuse the Issue Updated event and it will work just as fine. However, there are advantages to having your own custom events as it helps to distinguish exactly what the nature of the update is. When you have the listeners' components in JIRA, having specialized events helps to distinguish the origin and act accordingly.
Now, you need to have your own notification scheme, so you can start adding notifications to your events. We will base our notification scheme on the default scheme to help us get things set up quickly:
- Select the Issues tab and then the Notification Schemes option.
- Click on the Copy link for Default Notification Scheme. A new notification scheme named Copy of Default Notification Scheme will be created.
- Click on the Edit link of Copy of Default Notification Scheme.
- Rename it to
Help Desk Notification Schemeand click on Update.
This will create a new notification scheme with the basic notifications prepopulated. All you need to do now is modify the events and add your own notification needs.
There are two rules you need to follow to add notifications. First, you need to add notifications for your custom events so that e-mails will be sent out when they are fired. Second, you will want users specified in the CC list custom field to also receive e-mails along with the assignee and reporter of the issue:
- Click on the Notifications link for Help Desk Notification Scheme.
- Click on the Add notification link.
- Select all the event types.
- Select User Custom Field Value for the notification type and select Escalation List from the drop-down list.
- Click on the Add button.
Nice and easy. With just a few clicks, JIRA has allowed you to add a new notification to not only all the system events, but also our new custom events.
The last step, as always, is to associate your scheme with projects for activation:
- Browse to the Global Help Desk project.
- Click on the Administration tab and select Notifications from the left panel.
- Select Use a different scheme in the Actions menu.
- Select Help Desk Notification Scheme.
- Click on the Associate button.
With just a few clicks, you enable JIRA to automatically send out e-mails to update users with their issue's progress. Not only this, but you have tied in the custom fields you created from earlier chapters to manage who, along with the issue assignee and reporter, will also get these notifications. So let's put this to the test!
- Create a new issue in the Global Help Desk project.
- Select one or more users for the Escalation List custom field. It is a good idea not to select yourself since the reporter will get notifications by default. Also make sure that the user selected has a valid e-mail address.
- Transition the issue to In Progress status and execute the Request for Info transition on the new issue.
- You will receive e-mails from JIRA within minutes.
If you do not receive e-mails from JIRA, check your mail queue and see if the mail is being generated, and follow the steps from the Troubleshooting notifications section in this chapter.