Determine why an email is processed as a comment on an existing ticket (instead of creating a new ticket)

Summary

This article will help you determine why an email was added as a comment on an existing ticket, instead of creating a new ticket.

Solution

Confirm the necessary items are present in the email

Once an email is received in a service project, Jira will perform a 2-step check:

• Condition-1: Jira will look for a valid Issue Key in the mail subject. If present, then the email will be processed as a comment on the existing ticket.

• Condition-2: Jira will scan the Message-IDs in the 'In-Reply-To' and 'References' headers of the email and perform a lookup in its database - if there is a match, then the email will be processed as a comment on the existing ticket.

• If both the above condition fails, then Jira will create a new ticket.

• Note: Jira will allow comments on an existing ticket, only when the Email Sender has the required permissions to add comments on the ticket. Else, a new ticket will be created for the email.

Here are the steps to validate the above conditions manually:

• Go to Project Settings → Email Requests. Click on 'View Logs'.

• Search for the Issue Key which you would like to check. You will see the list of emails processed in the ticket.

Condition 1:

This is straight forward - check if there is any Issue Key present in the Email Subject.

Condition 2:

Below are the steps to gather Message-ID from an Email:

• Click on the three dots (...) to download the Raw Email Message.

• Open the downloaded file using your own Email Client.

• We'll be analysing the Email Headers of this email - in particular, there are 3 headers in our interest:

  • Message-ID: This field contains the Message ID of the current email.

  • In-Reply-To: This field contains the Message ID of the immediate previous email of the mail thread.

  • References: This field contains Message IDs of all the previous emails of the mail thread.

• Follow the below steps to view the Email Headers of an email and search for the keyword 'Message-ID'. Note: You may find multiple entries for the keyword 'Message-ID' - you can find the actual Message-ID in the headers.

  • View Email Headers in Outlook (Windows): https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/view-internet-message-headers-in-outlook-cd039382-dc6e-4264-ac74-c048563d212c#

  • View Email Headers in Outlook (MAC): https://insider.microsoft365.com/es-mx/blog/view-source-in-emails-in-outlook-for-mac

  • View Email Headers in MAC Mail Client: https://www.lifewire.com/view-message-source-os-x-mail-1172799#

Now, here are the steps to compare the Message-IDs:

• Search for the Issue Key which you would like to check, under Project Settings → Email Requests → View Logs. You will see the list of emails processed in the ticket.

• Download the email-in-question (the email, which you want to know why it was processed as a comment). Open it using your Mail Client, view the Email Headers and fetch the Message IDs listed under 'In-Reply-To' and 'References' headers.

• Download the first email (on which the Issue was created), open it using a Mail Client, view the Email Headers and fetch the Message-ID.

• Compare it with the previously fetched Message-IDs (from the email-in-question) to see if there is a match. If yes - this is the reason why the Email was added as a comment.

• Repeat the previous step for all the emails received before the email in question.

If you're unable to find a match in Message-ID, or if you need further assistance, contact Atlassian Support.