How to get notifications working (on Assignment and Resolve events)

[Bill Wood]

I have configured Jira to notify the current assignee when an assignment event is triggered, hoping that when an existing task is assigned to someone new they will get notifed. I also configured the workflow so that when tasks are resolved, a certain group of people, as defined in the custom field Notify on Close, is notified. Neither of these notification are working. Notifications do work when a task is created.

When I searched help it mentioned configuring an SMTP server, but I couldn't see anywhere to configure one for the hosted Jira solution.

[Bill Wood · Accepted solution]

Now that was tricky! It had to do with workflows and the weird way transitions are created. Several times when I created a transition, it didn't use "standard" transitions but created custom transitions. These transitions, even though they move an issue from In Process to Resolved and are called Resolve Issue, do not fire an Issue Resolved event, they fire a generic event. Since my notification scheme was based on the Resolved event, they weren't working. Associating the transition with the Issue Resolved event solved the problem.

[Bill Wood]

Now that was tricky! It had to do with workflows and the weird way transitions are created. Several times when I created a transition, it didn't use "standard" transitions but created custom transitions. These transitions, even though they move an issue from In Process to Resolved and are called Resolve Issue, do not fire an Issue Resolved event, they fire a generic event. Since my notification scheme was based on the Resolved event, they weren't working. Associating the transition with the Issue Resolved event solved the problem.

[Andy Brook [Plugin People]]

This is all hanlded in the Notification Scheme for your project, typically you can add project roles into specific events, so that all 'developers' get notified of X. Not getting a notification usually just means the event is not associated with the user, so you have to locate an intersect, role, group etc.

https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRA/Creating+a+Notification+Scheme

[Bill Wood]

I should have explicitly mentioned that I did set up a notification scheme, but that is what I meant by "I have configured Jira." The event is supposed to send a notification to a particular group, the user is in the group, but the user doesn't get notified. Thanks for responding.

[Andy Brook [Plugin People]]

Hi Bill, k, I wonder, that user isnt the one making the change is it (a user can opt out of self notificaitons). Debugging notifications will allow you a way to see who got notified, as it happens, JEMH also captures such events and provides an IssueTab with _notification_ history per event that would show this up in a more digestible format.

[Bill Wood]

I was the one doing the editing, someone else was supposed to see the edits. What is JEMH?

[Andy Brook [Plugin People]]

OK, that rules out self-ignore options leaving the actual event that was fired vs the notification scheme vs the user. Have you tried the Notification Helper, new in 5.2 (but you can install the plugin from 5.0), it allows you to pick the specific event eg ISSUE_RESOLVED, a given issue for context and the user you want to check. It should help you pick out why that user isn't receiving a notification.

JEMH is a Mail Handler for JIRA but incorporates a configurable IssueListener for JIRA/non-JIRA notification and (the thing I referrred to) an IssueTab that gets populated with WHO got WHAT notification WHEN.

[Bill Wood]

I've done some more testing, and I've checked out the Notification Helper, which suggested that a notification should have happened.

I have a workflow defined where a task gets resolved, then closed. When it is resolved, a specific group of people should be notified. These people have the ability to close the issue.

The most problematic notification is when something is resolved. It should notify the assignee, the watchers, and the contents of a custom field. The custom field is called "Notify on Close" and is of type "Multi Group Picker." The group I picked includes 3 people, but they did not get notified. I had other problems with this group, like filters that were shared with it that the members could not see.

Other notifications that didn't work are when the task is closed, the watchers and the same custom group should be notified. None got notified.

The custom group did work when the test task was reopened.

Maybe it will all work if I test it tomorrow. :-)