Problem

The Automation "Send customized email" action in Jira Service Management Cloud blocks email delivery to recipients that are not registered as active Atlassian accounts with product access. This includes:

• Distribution list addresses (e.g., ops-team@company.com, alerts@company.com)
• Any external email address not registered as a Customer in the JSM project
  The error shown: "We couldn't send emails to any recipients. This may be for data privacy or recipient email account configuration reasons."
  This is a significant issue for customers migrating from Data Center, where automation rules sending to distribution lists worked without restriction. On Cloud, all these distribution lists must be individually added as Customers, which is not scalable and pollutes the Customer list with non-human addresses.
  Standard Jira notifications deliver to these same addresses without issue, only the Automation "Send customized email" action is affected.

Suggested Solution

Provide a global allowlist configuration for the "Send customized email" action where administrators can specify trusted domains or addresses permitted to receive automation emails.
Ideally:

• At minimum, allow sending to email addresses on domains verified in Atlassian Guard. If an organisation has verified domain ownership, that should serve as a trust signal for Automation email delivery.
• Additionally, allow Org/Site Admins to configure a custom domain or address allowlist in the Global Automation configuration.

Why This Is Important

• Blocks a common DC-to-Cloud migration workflow, distribution lists as automation recipients worked in DC without restriction
• Guard domain verification already establishes trust, blocking emails to your own verified domain is counterintuitive

Workaround

Add each distribution list email address as a Customer in the JSM project (Project → Customers → Add customers). This registers the address as a known recipient and allows the governance check to pass.