Why restricting non jira users to get emails from Jira?

[Maxime Lemanissier]

Hi there,

I would like to be able to add any email address as watcher in Jira. For now, only registered user can be set as watcher.

I found that this request has existed from 9 years now and is not resolved yet: https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRA-7864

As it's the right place to get an answer from Atlassian, i'm asking why you are unwilling to fix this?

Maxime

[SimonS]

Hi Maxine,

I'm not speaking for Atlassian in my comment, but I'll give you my 2¢.

I think we have not implemented this feature not because it is not technically feasibly, but because it is not feasible from a licensing perspective.

We do our very best to keep our licenses cheap and effective. Part of this model is that we don't have a concept of a "lite" user and a normal user. Email notifications, from watching issues to RSS feeds, etc, are a big selling point for JIRA. We do not want to restrict the functionality of JIRA based on a user type.

That being said, non-user watches are very common in helpdesk solutions. JIRA can be (and is) used as a help desk, but the best way to use JIRA as a help desk is with the unlimited user license. This means every user who submits a ticket can log in, view their issues, be notified, etc. This works well and is very useful for the user.

In the end, if someone can submit a ticket and get notified of all updates, I believe they should be licensed as a user.

-Simon

[Maxime Lemanissier]

Hi Simon,

For the license usage issue, it would be quite strange to lock down watchers feature, considering we can make jira completely open for anonymous usage thanks to permission scheme customization.

Maxime

[Maxime Lemanissier]

Hi,

I posted a new comment on the related issue, https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRA-7864?focusedCommentId=298993#comment-298993

I think your position here is not coherent, but that's just my opinion. You can't expect your customers to buy additional licenses just to send emails.

Maxime