FSDS Review Email Generator

A Python tool to retrieve ticket information from Jira API and automatically generate review announcement and approved emails for Flight Support Data Systems (FSDS) change requests.

Features

• Retrieves ticket information directly from Jira API:
  • FSDS ticket number
  • Ticket title
  • Reporter/author name
  • Review deadline (3 weekdays from current date)
  • User signature from git config
• Generates HTML-formatted review announcement emails
• Generates plain text approved emails
• Preserves email template formatting with proper indentation
• Optional automatic browser opening of generated HTML
• Saves ticket information to JSON for reuse

Scripts

write_review_email.py

Main script for retrieving ticket info from Jira API and generating review announcement emails.

write_approved_email.py

Script for generating approved emails from previously saved ticket JSON data.

Usage

Prerequisites

1. You need a Jira API token stored in ~/jira_api_token.txt
2. The token should have read access to the FSDS project in Jira

Review Email Generation

Basic usage with FSDS number:

python write_review_email.py 189

Automatically open generated HTML in browser:

python write_review_email.py 189 --open

Approved Email Generation

After generating a review email, you can create an approved email:

python write_approved_email.py 189

This reads the saved JSON file (FSDS-189-info.json) and generates approved email text.

Get help:

python write_review_email.py --help
python write_approved_email.py --help

Requirements

• Python 3.6+
• Jinja2
• jira (Python Jira API library)

Install dependencies:

pip install jinja2 jira

Setup

1. Create a Jira API token:

   • Go to your Jira profile settings
   • Generate an API token
   • Save the token to ~/jira_api_token.txt

2. Ensure your token has read access to the FSDS project

Files

• write_review_email.py - Main script for review email generation (uses Jira API)
• write_approved_email.py - Script for approved email generation
• email-template.md - Jinja2 template for review announcement emails
• approved-template.md - Jinja2 template for approved emails

Template Variables

The email templates support the following placeholders:

Review Email Template (email-template.md)

• {{author}} - Ticket reporter/author name
• {{fsds_number}} - Full FSDS ticket identifier (e.g., "FSDS-189")
• {{title}} - Ticket title/summary
• {{review_deadline}} - Automatically calculated review deadline (3 weekdays from today)
• {{signature}} - User's first name from git config

Approved Email Template (approved-template.md)

• {{author}} - Ticket reporter/author name
• {{fsds_number}} - Full FSDS ticket identifier (e.g., "FSDS-189")
• {{title}} - Ticket title/summary
• {{signature}} - User's first name from git config

Output

Review Email Script

The script generates:

1. Console output showing retrieved ticket information
2. HTML file named FSDS-{number}-review-email.html with formatted review announcement
3. JSON file named FSDS-{number}-info.json with ticket data for later use

Approved Email Script

The script generates:

1. Plain text output ready to copy/paste into email
2. Console display of approved email content

License

BSD 3-Clause License. See LICENSE file for details.

Copyright

Copyright (c) 2026, Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory