How can I delete an inactive user from a field that contains multiple users?

Question

I have a User Picker (multiple users) field that and in many issues, one of the users is Inactive.  This is causing some of my automation rules to fail when they access this field with the error "Inactive User".

I tried to create a rule to delete the user from the field, but it doesn't work like a labels field does.  You can't add/remove, you can only set and copy. So I can't specify to delete that user or to copy all users in that field except the inactive one.

I can't do it with Bulk change.

I can't even search for issues with that inactive user in my custom field because they don't appear in the dropdown for the query and typing in their old email address didn't work.

I can see the user when I look at the issue and could delete them there (but that's a LOT of issues to do manually), but I can't even run a query to find those issues out of the thousands.

I need suggestions on how to get this user out of my issues so I don't keep having automation errors.

Trudy P Claspill · Answer

To search for users that include the inactive user you have to use their Atlassian Account ID; i.e. "Multiple User Picker[User Picker (multiple users)]" in (62bbbb835111209f4fdebf71) To get that user's Atlassian Account ID you could either - go to https://admin.atlassian.com and look the user up, display their user account details and get the id from the URL, or - Use the following endpoint in a browser tab to display all the fields and their content for an issue that includes the specified user. Then find the custom field, and from that find the user's account ID in the information about users specified in that field. https:///rest/api/2/issue/?expand=names

Trudy P Claspill · Answer

Hello @Cash Coyne

To do this in an Automation Rule I believe you would have to use the More Options and Advanced Editing with JSON to remove a user from a multiple user picker field without affecting the other users in the field, similar to the example for adding a user to the field.

https://support.atlassian.com/cloud-automation/docs/advanced-field-editing-using-json/#Multi-user-picker-custom-field

{
  "update": {
    "customfield_10147": [{
      "remove": {"id":"62bbbb835111209f4fdebf71"}
    }]
  }
}

I tested this in my own environment and it worked.