Customer Notifications won't trigger in Jira Service Management Cloud

Summary

Understand Customer notifications in Jira Service Management Cloud, how they work and why they may not be triggering for some customers.

Diagnosis

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 project 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 project 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 project 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 project sends all the people involved in the request a notification.

• Request resolved: Whe a request resolution field is set, your service project 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 project notifies everyone involved.

• Participant added: When participants are added to a request, your service project notifies the new participants.

• Organization added: When a request is shared with a customer organization, your service project 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 project 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 project 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:

1. The "Autowatch own work items" feature is turned on.

2. The customer has turned on the "Watch your work items" feature.

3. The customer is an internal user (Assignee).

Autowatch own work items is turned on

This setting is only applicable for use cases where the customer is an internal user. When set to Yes, the "Autowatch own work items" feature means that you will automatically be 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:

1. In Jira, click Settings > System.

2. Under User Interface, Default users preferences, check that Autowatch own work items is set to Yes.

3. Click to Edit Default values.

4. Uncheck the Autowatch own work items box.

5. Update to confirm the change.

Customer turned on the "Watch your work items" feature

You can create an automation rule that will check if the reporter is added to the watchers section once a support request is created and automatically remove it. This will ensure the customer receives the notifications even if the "Watch your work items" feature is turned on.

Here's how you can configure the rule:

1. When: Issue created

2. If: smart values condition

   1. First value: {{issue.watchers.displayName}}

   2. Condition: contains.

   3. Second value: {{issue.reporter.displayName}}

3. Then: Manage watchers

   1. Remove these watchers: {{issue.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.

1. In Jira, click Settings > Products.

2. Under Jira Service Management, Configuration > Notifications.

3. Select the "Yes, send customers both Jira Service Management and Jira notifications" option.

References

• What notifications do my customers and team receive?

• Automatically remove issue reporter from Watchers when moving issue.

• How to stop being automatically added to the watcher's list when working on issues?