Restricting users from adding large Distribution List to the Watchers Column in Jira

[Kumar Ramachandran]

We had an issue when a developer accidentally entered a very large Distribution List into the watcher field of a Jira ticket. This caused Jira to crash.

We would like to find a way to prevent users from entering a distribution list or limit only 20 emails in the watcher per issue.

How do we go about limiting what gets entered within the watcher field?

[Dieter · Accepted solution]

One can prevent such "accidents" by providing another implementation of NotificationSchemeManager. This implementation could inherit from the default implementation and just overwrite getRecipients. If this set of recipients is larger than a predefined limit, mails are not sent or only a certain number of emails are sent. You might also send an alert email to the admins to indicate that obviously somewhere something is misconfigured.

[Dieter]

One can prevent such "accidents" by providing another implementation of NotificationSchemeManager. This implementation could inherit from the default implementation and just overwrite getRecipients. If this set of recipients is larger than a predefined limit, mails are not sent or only a certain number of emails are sent. You might also send an alert email to the admins to indicate that obviously somewhere something is misconfigured.

[JamieA]

Yeah, as Renjith says, only users can be watchers, not DLs. Do you mean something other than watchers, eg you put a large group like jira-users in a group field that was used in a notification scheme?

[Renjith Pillai]

Still you have a problem as you mentioned, if it is a distribution list which is internally having too many users Jira will not even know about this. For jira it is just a single email id.

I know I haven't answered your question.

[Kumar Ramachandran]

We use Jira v4.4#649-r158309