Customer reply to a notification is added as internal comment on a request

Summary

When a Jira user is acting as a Customer on a Service Management project and replies to a Jira notification, the comment is added as an internal comment.

Diagnosis

• Check if the user is an Agent (contains a Jira license);

• Check if the user has "Interact with Customers" permission in the project;

• Check if the mail handler used is Jira's Mail Handler or if the Service Management Project is using a JSM mail handler.

Cause

Jira Service Management interprets all comments as internal unless:

1. they were created in the customer portal.

2. They were created in reply to the email notification by the reporter, a request participant, or an agent and processed by the service project mail handler.

3. an agent made a comment in Jira and selected the "respond to customer" (external) option.

4. an agent changes any comment from internal to external by editing it in Jira.

5. they were created before an existing Jira project was converted into a Service Desk project.

Solution

Working as designed. Jira mail handler will consider the user as a "Collaborator" and add the reply-to email as internal.

In order to add the comment as public, the reply-to should be managed by the own Jira Service Management handler, instead of the Jira mail handler, thus satisfying the requirement "(2) they were created in reply to the email notification by the reporter / a participant / an agent, and processed by the Service Desk mail handler".

For this we will need to :

1. Configure the Jira Service Management to use its own email account, adding the email at the Project Settings > Email Requests. See Receiving requests by email

2. Configure the email on your Jira Service Management project at the Project Settings > Notifications. Then the incoming mail will be handled by the Service Desk.