Jira Service Desk Mail Handler - What happens to unprocessed emails?

[Alexis Ramacciotti]

Hello,

I have a question about email handler in Service Desk: when an email does not end in creating a support request (for example, because the sender is not allowed to create request), what happens to the email?  Is it destroyed? Or is it just left unprocessed on the mail server?

Our customer wishes this kind of mail to be preserved, ideally processed under a "default" channel.

For info, the mail server is a POP3 server.

Kind regards

[Alexis Robert · Accepted solution]

Hi @Alexis Ramacciotti, 

in my experience, the unprocessed emails will stay in the inbox indefinitely if they are not catched by the email handler or manually removed.

Let me know if this helps, 

--Alexis

[Manon Soubies-Camy]

Indeed, see Creating issues and comments from email:

If JIRA does not successfully process a message, the message will remain either in your mail account or on the file system.

[Charlie Misonne]

@Alexis Robert@Manon Soubies-Camy

I'm surprised. That information is new to me. I've been working on several Jira instances and in my experience emails are deleted from the mailbox.

I must be missing some configuration or I misunderstand the part Manon is quoting from the documentation.

Take a look at those screenshots. I have never seen an email remaining in the inbox when they are rejected. I think the same goes for users that are not on the customer list of a service desk project like @Alexis Ramacciottiis describing.

I think Jira makes the difference between Rejected (which counts as processed) and unprocessed. This is unclear in the documentation.

This topic confirms my assumption.

Related Suggestion

[Alexis Robert]

Hi @Charlie Misonne, 

on the latest Service Desk instance that I've setup, any email that is sent to the Inbox but not catched by the mail handler (because the recipient is not the one specified in the Mail Handler, or because of forbidden characters in the email body) will stay in the inbox, whereas all mail that is triggering an issue to be created will be removed.

The topic you've linked is a different issue - the email is catched and triggers an action (that fails as a user isn't created), so the email will be removed from the Inbox.

[Charlie Misonne]

Ok, so there is a difference between:

• emails not catched by the mail handler
• rejected emails

Returning to the original question:

when an email does not end in creating a support request (for example, because the sender is not allowed to create request), what happens to the email?

The email will be deleted in case it was sent to the recipient configured in Jira and the sender has no permissions to create the ticket.

Right?

[Alexis Ramacciotti]

Thanks everyone for the insight on this topic.

I still have a question: isn't Service Desk meant to automatically create a new user when receiving an email from a sender not known in the system yet?  If so, the mail should be processed normally, am I right?

[Charlie Misonne]

That depends on the customer permissions setting of your project.

Jira will only create user accounts automatically when you selected Anyone can email the service desk or raise a request in the portal.

See this documentation page.

[Charlie Misonne · Accepted solution]

The email will be deleted from the mail server.

You can configure a mail rule in your mail client where you copy every incoming mail from the inbox the a separate folder. This way all emails will be kept.

Of course even emails that are created as a ticket successfully will remain in that folder. So it's not an ideal solution.

I can also recommend checking the mail processing log from time to time. You will see which mails were rejected on that page.

Jira configuration -> Applications ->Email requests -> view log (next to the email address) -> open "processing log" tab

[Alexis Ramacciotti]

And this apply whatever the kind of mail server is involved?  I mean, no difference if this is a POP3 or an IMAP server?

[Charlie Misonne]

yes indeed

[Etienne Janse van Rensburg]

hi @Alexis Ramacciotti

There is in fact a difference with how the mails are handled between POP and the IMAP setup.

Please refer to the explanation by Atlassian, by following this link:
https://confluence.atlassian.com/servicedeskcloud/receiving-requests-by-email-747602718.html?_ga=2.160699893.995532573.1558945008-787707061.1549014541#Receivingrequestsbyemail-processed

[Asim K]

https://support.atlassian.com/jira-service-desk-cloud/docs/jira-service-desk-email-process-for-pop-imap-and-cloud-addresses/