Summary
Improve Jira Core Mail Handler to preserve HTML formatting and inline links like the JSM Mail Handler

Environment

• Jira Data Center (Core/Jira Software)

• Using Jira Mail Handler configured in ⚙ → System → Incoming Mail (not the JSM Mail Handler under Project settings → Email Requests)

Current behavior

When issues/comments are created via the Jira Mail Handler from HTML emails:

• The mail handler converts the email body to plain text.

• When the sender comes from Outlook, all inline links in the original email are rewritten into a footnote-style format, for example:

  Just a Jira link [1]...
  
  Links:
  ------
  [1] https://jira-host/jira/browse/FEFE-2 

   

• When the sender comes from Google, we see a slightly improvement (no citations), but the format is still not good:

• Just a Jira link 
  <https://jira-host/jira/browse/FEFE-2>

   

• Rich formatting from the original email (headings, bullets, tables, colors, etc.) is lost.
• Inline images are typically just added as attachments and are not rendered inline in the description/comment.

Problem / impact

Customers who use email-to-issue heavily for Jira Software / Core projects expect the created issues to reflect the original email formatting as closely as possible, similar to how Jira Service Management Mail Handler behaves.

Requested behavior

Add a richer HTML-preserving mode to the Jira Mail Handler so that it behaves more like the JSM Mail Handler when processing HTML emails.