Service Account User Not Seeing Issues in Sprint

Question

I just migrated some automation over to using a service account user. I've got the scopes dialed in, but it's not getting any results for the getIssuesForSprint endpoint. The same request returns lots of results when run from the browser.

If I open my browser and paste this relative URL `https://MYCLOUDDOMAIN.atlassian.net/rest/agile/1.0/sprint/MYSPRINT/issue`, i'm getting something like this

{
  "expand": "schema,names",
  "startAt": 0,
  "maxResults": 50,
  "total": 79,
  "issues": [
...

When I make the same call as the service account user to the api endpoint `https://api.atlassian.com/ex/jira/MYCLOUDID/rest/agile/1.0/sprint/MYSPRINT/issue` I don't get anything

{"startAt":0,"maxResults":50,"total":0,"issues":[]}

The service account user is able to get sprints just fine via the `/rest/agile/1.0/sprint/123` endpoint

I'm assuming this is a project permission issue. But when I go to the appropriate groups and click 'Add User' there is no ability to add the service account user.

Is there a secondary mechanism I need to be using to get the service account access to sprint issues?

Germán Morales · Answer

Good discussion here. A couple of things that might help:

On the Browse Projects permission: worth double-checking that the service account has Browse Projects at the project level specifically. The getIssuesForSprint endpoint can return an empty issues array when the user can see the sprint (via /rest/agile/1.0/sprint/{id}) but doesn't have Browse permission on the project the sprint belongs to. That mismatch — sprint visible, issues empty — is a known symptom of that.

On the bulk-add via API: the endpoint for adding a member to a project role is PUT /rest/api/3/project/{projectIdOrKey}/role/{id}. As Trudy noted, adding a service account as an individual user to a Permission Scheme directly may not work. The more reliable path is adding it to a Project Role, then associating that role in the Permission Scheme. You'd loop through all projects using GET /rest/api/3/project/search with pagination to do this at scale.

Also worth checking: is the sprint currently active? The getIssuesForSprint endpoint only returns issues from active or future sprints by default, not closed ones.

Trudy P Claspill · Answer

Do please let us know if you are able to add the service account to the Permission Scheme. I was not able to do so in my own instance with either the name or auto-generated email of the service account.

If it doesn't work a go-forward solution is to add the service account user as a default member of 1..n global Project Roles. They will then be added to each new project created. However, that works only for Company Managed projects. For the pre-existing project you would have to implement a solution using the API to bulk add the service account to roles in the existing projects.

Trudy P Claspill · Answer

@Ralph Callaway

Did you confirm that was actually possible?

In my testing I could add a Service Account to the project in a role, but could not add it as an individual User in a Permission scheme. I tried both the friendly name of the Service Account and the auto-generated "email" address of the account.