Email Notifications in Jira

Introduction

Email notifications in Jira are crucial for keeping your team informed about changes, updates, and actions required on various issues. This tutorial will guide you through setting up and managing email notifications in Jira, ensuring that your team stays on top of their tasks.

Setting Up Email Notifications

To set up email notifications in Jira, follow these steps:

1. Log in to your Jira instance as an administrator.
2. Navigate to the System settings.
3. Under Mail, click on Outgoing Mail.
4. Configure the SMTP server settings. These settings include the SMTP host, port, and authentication details.
5. Click Test Connection to ensure that Jira can successfully send emails using the provided SMTP settings.
6. Once the test is successful, save the settings.

Configuring Notification Schemes

Jira uses notification schemes to control who gets notified about different events. To configure notification schemes:

1. Go to Jira Settings and select Issues.
2. Under Notification Schemes, you can either edit an existing scheme or create a new one.
3. To create a new scheme, click Add Notification Scheme and provide a name and description.
4. Add notification events to the scheme and specify the recipients for each event. Recipients can be users, groups, or roles.
5. Associate the notification scheme with your project by going to Project Settings and selecting the scheme under Notifications.

Customizing Email Templates

Jira allows you to customize the email templates used for notifications. This can be useful for branding or providing additional information in the emails. To customize email templates:

1. Access the Jira installation directory on your server.
2. Navigate to the atlassian-jira/WEB-INF/classes/templates/email/ directory.
3. Modify the velocity template files (.vm) as needed. These files control the layout and content of the emails.
4. Restart Jira to apply the changes.

Testing Email Notifications

Once you have set up and configured email notifications, it's important to test them to ensure they are working as expected. To test email notifications:

1. Create a new issue in a project associated with the notification scheme you configured.
2. Perform actions that should trigger notifications, such as assigning the issue, adding comments, or changing the issue status.
3. Check the email inboxes of the recipients to verify that notifications are received.

Troubleshooting

If you encounter issues with email notifications, consider the following troubleshooting steps:

• Verify SMTP server settings and ensure they are correct.
• Check the Jira logs for any error messages related to email sending.
• Ensure that the notification scheme is correctly associated with the project.
• Confirm that recipients are correctly specified and have valid email addresses.

Conclusion

Email notifications are an essential feature in Jira, helping teams stay informed and collaborate effectively. By following this tutorial, you should be able to set up, configure, and manage email notifications in Jira, ensuring timely communication within your team.