It is hard for users to understand email notifications and understand why a specific user is or is not notified. Based on experience from MantisHub, this is the most confusing aspect of MantisBT for administrators.

We have the following efforts to help with that:

• EventLog plugin
• LOG_EMAIL and LOG_EMAIL_RECIPIENT

This work should make it easier for users to get what is going on.

• What are the log events associated with a single request (EventLog plugin).
• Have a LOG_EMAIL_VERBOSE for verbose internal only events that are just noise for end users.
• Always log the high level event that is happening (e.g. issue added).
• Have consistency in the way we format the log events.

The output should look as follows:
[MAIL] Issue 0000031 reported
[RECIPIENT] Issue = 0000031, add administrator (reporter)
[RECIPIENT] Issue = 0000031, add vboctor (handler)
[RECIPIENT] Issue = 0000031, add administrator (based on access level)
[RECIPIENT] Issue = 0000031, add vboctor (based on access level)
[RECIPIENT] Issue = 0000031, add dev1 (based on access level)
[RECIPIENT] Issue = 0000031, add dev2 (based on access level)
[RECIPIENT] Issue = 0000031, drop dev1 (no email address)
[RECIPIENT] Issue = 0000031, drop dev2 (no email address)

As you can see, the user can understand what is in a request, the top level logical action, why users were added / removed from the notify list.