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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.

Accepted answers

Richard Hurt

This is a known bug with a workaround: https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRACLOUD-98791

I applied the workaround in our Jira system and it seemed to work. Thanks for all the help, everyone.

All comments

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.

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

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.

Melika-Everview

Hi @Richard Hurt, first the immediate fix, since that's what's blocking you.

A visible-but-uneditable Priority field is almost always one of two things:

Team-managed project: the system Priority field can't be edited per-project — you'd add a custom "Priority" field with the values you want.
Company-managed project: Priority is likely just missing from the Edit screen — go to Project settings → Screens and make sure the Priority field is on the Edit/Default screen.

(Project settings → Details tells you which type you're on.) One of those almost always unfreezes it. Varun's point about the scheme is also worth a quick check, though you've said yours is unchanged from default.

Worth separating two things, though: setting a priority once, and keeping priorities right as work shifts. The field fixes the first. The second where a project's priorities genuinely change week to week is where most teams struggle, because a static field set once quietly goes stale.

Full disclosure, I work on Everview, that second problem is what we built for. It connects to your Jira (Jira stays your source of record) and gives you a live view where you re-prioritise across a project as things change, so priority reflects what's actually happening now instead of a label set weeks ago.

On the Atlassian Marketplace if it's useful: Everview.ai

Hope the screen fix sorts the immediate blocker either way!

Richard Hurt

This is a Team-managed project and we don't really want to change the Priority fields (the default ones are fine). We just want to be able to set/change the priority for a specific work item.

It appears as if Jira has updated something and now we have a smaller, more concise Create Task model window. If I expand the window I can see a "Priorities" dropdown and am able to change it to whatever I need.

However, I still cannot edit it after the work item is created. The "Task" work item is configured with the Priority field in the Description fields but it still doesn't show up.

Richard Hurt

This is a known bug with a workaround: https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRACLOUD-98791

I applied the workaround in our Jira system and it seemed to work. Thanks for all the help, everyone.

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