Customer Notifications won't trigger in Jira Service Management Cloud
Platform Notice: Cloud Only - This article only applies to Atlassian apps on the cloud platform.
Summary
Understand Customer notifications in Jira Service Management Cloud, how they work, and why they may not be triggering for some customers.
Diagnosis
This article covers customer notifications (portal/email updates to the people involved in a request). If agents aren't receiving internal notifications, that's a different configuration — see your project's internal notification scheme instead.
What are Customer Notifications
In Jira Service Management, customer notifications are automated messages sent to customers to keep them informed about the status of their service requests. These notifications can include updates like ticket creation acknowledgment, status changes, comments added to the ticket, and ticket resolution.
The key types of customer notifications include:
Customer invited: When a customer is invited to your service space portal, they are sent an email.
Request created: When customers create requests in the portal or send an email to your email channel, your service space sends a confirmation that their request was received.
Public comment added: When a comment that is visible to your customers is added to the request, your service space sends all the customers involved in the request a notification.
Public comment edited: When a comment that is visible to your customers is edited, your service space sends all the people involved in the request a notification.
Request resolved: When a request resolution field is set, your service space notifies the reporter and all customers involved. This notification is sent to the reporter even if they have turned off notifications for a request.
Request reopened: When a request's resolution field is cleared, your service space notifies everyone involved.
Participant added: When participants are added to a request, your service space notifies them.
Organization added: When a request is shared with a customer organization, your service space notifies the organization's members so they can opt in to further updates.
Approval required: When a request transitions to an approval stage of its workflow, your service space notifies approvers that they must act on the request.
Customer-visible status changed: When a request transitions to a status that is visible to the customer, your service space notifies the customers involved.
These notifications help keep customers informed and engaged throughout the support process, ensuring transparency and timely communication. In case you are interested in using this feature, here is our documentation on how to set up notifications for your customers and team.
Solution
Reasons why customer notifications may not trigger
Sometimes all settings seem to be in place, but the customer notifications won't trigger. Some reasons for this to happen are:
Who is missing the notification? | Most likely cause |
An internal user (an Atlassian-licensed agent) acting as the customer | "Autowatch own work items" is on |
An external/portal customer who is the reporter | The customer turned on "Watch your work items" |
An agent who raised the request on behalf of a customer and is also the Assignee | Treated as an agent — internal notifications take priority |
Autowatch own work items is turned on
This setting applies only to use cases where the customer is an internal user. When set to Yes, the "Autowatch own work items" feature means you will automatically be added as a watcher when you create or comment on a work item. This could cause the internal user not to receive customer notifications for their support request. To guarantee that these internal users will not be added automatically as a watcher, you will need to follow the steps below:
In Jira, click Settings > System.
Under User Interface, Default users preferences, check that Autowatch own work items is set to Yes.
Click to Edit Default values.
Uncheck the Autowatch own work items box.
Update to confirm the change.
Verify
Create a test request as the affected internal user, add a public comment as another agent, and confirm the internal user receives the customer notification email.
Customer turned on the "Watch your work items" feature
You can create an automation rule that checks whether the reporter is added to the watchers section when a support request is created and automatically removes them. This will ensure the customer receives notifications even if the "Watch your work items" feature is enabled.
Build this rule in Space settings > Automation for the affected service space (or at the global level if it should apply to all spaces).
When: Work item created
If: smart values condition
First value:
{{issue.watchers.displayName}}Condition: contains.
Second value:
{{issue.reporter.displayName}}
Then: Manage watchers
Remove these watchers:
{{issue.reporter}}
Verify
Open the rule's audit log to confirm it ran on the test request, then check the request's Watchers list no longer contains the reporter.
Customer is considered an agent in the request
Sometimes, an agent creates a request on behalf of a customer and is automatically added to the Reporter field for that request. If the same agent is added to the Assignee field of the request, they're considered both a customer and an agent on the request. For these scenarios, internal notifications will take priority over customer notifications. One way to guarantee they will still receive notifications is to allow those internal customers to receive Jira notifications.
In Jira, click Settings > Apps.
Under Jira Service Management, Configuration > Notifications.
Select the "Yes, send customers both Jira Service Management and Jira notifications" option.
Verify
Have the agent-as-reporter trigger a customer-visible event (e.g. a public comment) and confirm they now receive the notification.
References
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