How come we can see priorities on work items but not change them?

[Richard Hurt]

We're trying to assign priorities to work items and the option isn't even available.  When we first started using Jira we were able to assign priorities to work items (Tasks, Epics, Stories, etc.) without any problem.  However, at some point the ability to manage priorities for tasks disappeared.  The work item priorities still show up in the boards and lists but no one is able to edit them.  All new work items get a "Medium" priority by default and it can't be changed.

I have Administrator access and have tried several suggestions outlined in some of the comments/questions here.  Nothing has been successful.  We have a single priority schema (Default) which is associated with our spaces and it's using the default priorities.

We are pretty new to Jira so I'm sure I'm missing something easy.  Again, no one can edit priorities (even Admin) but everyone can see them.

[Evgenii]

Hi, @Richard Hurt 

Check, that Priority field is on Edit screen. 
Also, if you add this field on Create Issue screen, can you change it during issue creation?

[Varun Chillamcharla]

Good call, worth checking both. If the scheme turns out to have multiple options and it's still stuck, screen config is probably the next thing to look at. Between those two, that should cover most cases like this

[Varun Chillamcharla]

Hi Richard,

Sounds like your Priority Scheme might only have one option assigned to it — I've seen this exact thing before. If "Medium" is the only value in the scheme attached to your project, the field shows up fine but the dropdown basically has nothing else to offer, so it looks frozen even for Admins.

Worth checking: go to Jira Settings > Issues > Priority Schemes, find the one tied to your project (you can confirm which one under Project Settings > Details), and see if Medium is really the only priority listed. If so, just add the others back in (Highest, High, Low, Lowest) and it should start working again.

Let me know if that's not it and I can help dig further.

[Richard Hurt]

I don't think this is the problem.  Both the Priority Scheme and Priorities are unchanged from the default Jira configuration.

[Varun Chillamcharla]

Hi Richard,

Since the scheme and priorities are unchanged from default, this might actually be a Team-managed vs Company-managed thing instead.

If your project is Team-managed (pretty common for newer setups), there's a known limitation — the system Priority field can't really be customized there. It's tied to the global default scheme, and there's no way to override it per-project like you can in Company-managed projects. That would explain exactly what you're seeing — visible, stuck on Medium, no way to change it even as an Admin.

Quick way to check: Project Settings > Details will tell you if it's Team-managed or Company-managed.

If it turns out to be Team-managed, most people work around it by creating their own custom field (call it something like "Priority") with the values they actually want, since the built-in one can't be touched.