The notification scheme is a reusable entity that links events with notifications. In other words, it contains the associations between events and their respective e-mail recipients:
- Browse to the JIRA administration console.
- Select the Issues tab and then the Notification schemes option. This will bring up the Notification Schemes page:
From this screen, you can see a list of all the notification schemes and the projects that are currently using them.
JIRA comes with a generic default notification scheme. The default scheme is set up with notifications set for all the system events. This allows you to quickly enable notifications in JIRA. The default setup has the following notifications:
- Current Assignee
- Reporter
- All Watchers
You can modify the default notification scheme to add your own notification rules, but as you grow your JIRA adoption, it is a better idea to create a new scheme from scratch or copy the default scheme and make your modifications.
Unlike other schemes such as the workflow scheme, where JIRA will create one whenever a new project is created, all new projects will be set to use the Default Notification Scheme. So, if you want to create notifications specific to your project, you will have to create a new notification scheme. Perform the following steps to create a new notification scheme:
- Browse to the Notification Schemes page.
- Click on the Add Notification Scheme button at the bottom.
- Enter a name and description for the new notification scheme.
- Click on the Add button to create the notification scheme.
When you create a new notification scheme, you create a blank scheme that can be configured later to add your own notification rules in. It is important that you configure its notification rules before applying the scheme to projects after you create a new notification scheme; otherwise, no notifications will be sent out. We will look at how to configure notification rules later in this chapter.
Unlike most other schemes, such as workflow, JIRA allows you to delete notification schemes even when they are being used by projects. However, JIRA does prompt you with a warning when you attempt to delete a notification scheme that is in use.
Perform the following steps to delete a notification scheme:
- Browse to the Notification Schemes page.
- Click on the Delete link for the notification scheme you wish to remove.
- Click on the Delete button to remove the notification scheme.
Once you delete a notification scheme, the projects that were previously using the scheme will have no notification schemes, so you will have to reapply schemes individually. When you delete a notification scheme, you remove all the notifications you set up in the scheme.
Notification schemes contain notifications that are set on events in JIRA. Perform the following steps to configure a notification scheme:
- Browse to the Notification Schemes page.
- Click on the Notifications link for the notification scheme you wish to configure. This will bring you to the Edit Notifications page.
This page lists all the existing events in JIRA and their corresponding notification recipients. If you configure a new notification scheme, there will be no notifications set for the events.
There are two ways you can add a new notification. You can add a notification for a specific event or you can add a notification for multiple events. Perform the following steps to add a new notification:
- Browse to the Edit Notifications page for the notification scheme you wish to configure.
- Click on the Add notification link or the Add link for the event you wish to add a notification for. Both actions will bring you to the Add Notification page. If you click on the Add link, the Events selection list will preselect the event for you.
- Select the events you want to add the notification type too.
- Select the notification type from the available options.
- Click on the Add button. For example, the following screenshot shows setting up a notification for JIRA to send out e-mails to the project lead when issues are created and updated:
Once added, the notification will be listed against the events selected. You can continue adding notifications for the events by repeating the same steps.
When notifications are no longer required for certain events, you can also have them removed. To remove notifications, you will need to do it one by one, per event:
- Browse to the Edit Notifications page for the notification scheme you wish to configure.
- Click on the Delete link for the notification you wish to remove.
- Click on the Delete button to remove the notification for the event.
After you remove a notification, users affected by that notification would stop receiving e-mails from JIRA. However, you need to pay attention to your configurations, as there may be other notifications for the same event that will continue to send e-mails to the same user. For example, if you created two notifications for the Issue Created event—one set to a Single User
John (who belongs to the jira-administrator group) and another set to jira-administrator group—and your goal is to prevent e-mails being sent to the user John, you will need to remove both notifications from the event instead of simply the Single User option.
When new projects are created, they are automatically assigned to use the default notification scheme. If you want your project to use a different scheme, you will need to go to the Notifications section of your project's administration console:
- Browse to the project administration page for the project you want to apply the notification scheme too.
- Select the Notifications option from the left panel:
- Select Use a different scheme from the Actions menu.
- Select the notification scheme to use.
- Click on the Associate button.
As soon as a notification scheme is applied to the project, it will take effect immediately, and you will see e-mails being sent out for the events that have been configured in the scheme. Like any other schemes in JIRA, notification schemes can be assigned to multiple projects to share the same notification behavior.