Set the mail handler to create and comment on only one project

[Elena]

Hi,
We need to set up a mail handler to create and comment on issues in a specific project, such as "TEST". Currently, the task is being created in the TEST project. Comments are created in any projects. For example, if you specify a link to a task from another project in the email subject, the comment will be added to the specified task. How to configure so that comments are added only in the tasks of the project, which is specified in the mail handler?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Accepted solution]

You can't do this.  Jira can only work with the issue you are telling it to in the subject, it can't know that your people intend a comment for another place.

Your users are changing the subjection of their reply emails, which is bad practise in general, you will need to get them to stop doing it. Or they are legitimately commencing on issues outside the test project.

[Elena]

Thanks 

[Dieter Guthmann]

In my opinion that's not a really comprehensible behavior:

If someone uses the serialnumber FOO-17 in the email subject, not knowing that there's somewhere a Jira project with that key, then Jira comments the issue FOO-17, instead of creating "SUPPORT-99"

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Eh?  It makes perfect sense. 

The vast majority of emails that contain an issue key will be replies to conversations started by the issue and a few will be from a human who wants to talk about it, and someone copies in the Jira email address so the conversation can be captured there.

It would be incomprehensible to me why you would want replies to emails to be imported as new issues instead of commenting on the issue that is being talked about.

[Dieter Guthmann]

If you have different Mail-Adresses and Handlers for different Projects, then the other way doesn't make sense.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

No, it makes no sense at all.

If someone replies to an email about a subject, does it make sense to go off and create a completely separate topic or thread, making it nothing to do with the original conversation?  And making it look like no-one is responding to the original issue?

I'll save you some time - the answer is "no"

As an example, look at this very conversation.  Would it make sense for every one of our comments, answers, and replies to be new unrelated questions?  Again, no.

[Dieter Guthmann]

Yes in case of replying to emails I agree with you.

But when you have Jira-Instances with a larger number of projects, the probability then increases that any combination of letters, a dash and numbers will result in a valid Jira-issue...

I think it would be great to have a option to restrict a 'Mailhandler' to one project.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Even with huge Jira instances, the probability that someone will write an email that includes an issue ID that really means something else is tiny. 

I have worked with a place that did have a problem with it, but most of it was being caused by a couple of their departments using a legacy system that kludged things into having to have a Jira-like ID for some things.  Once they got rid of the legacy system that they'd been trying to dump for years, the problem vanished.

You can't restrict a mail handler to a single project (because it makes no sense to just throw away responses to stuff outside the project), but you do have the option of not using the comment functions.  Choosing a "create" handler instead of a "create or comment" handler will make Jira work the way you are looking for