Redmine

How do I set up an issue category to automatically notify several people when an issue is added? Either as a simple email or by automatically adding them to the watch list.

I need to cater for a situation where a high-priority issue is raised and the default assignee cannot see the email in a timely manner (e.g. they are away for the day and a support level agreement requires a response within 4 hours.)

• The helpdesk person raising the issue does not know who should be added as watchers. (If this is a manual process then we can expect it to not be followed for at least one critical event.)
• Project members do not want to get notification of every change. (It's too easy to ignore all notifications of you receive irrelevant ones.)
• Most of the users do not use RSS. The solution cannot involve them using a new tool (in addition to Redmine).
• Some users will only use Redmine infrequently. The solution cannot require them to monitor it regularly. (Email works to tell them to check Redmine.)

In the past I would have used a distribution mailing list as the assignee but Redmine doesn't seem to cater for that.