Show issue links also if I cannot access linked issues

Question

Hi,

is there a way to show issue links also if I cannot access the linked issues? Similar to the links in this support case:

https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRASERVER-63363

Linked issues are shown, issues that I cannot access are shown as "You do not have permission to view this page".

The issue and its linked issues are all on the same Jira instance, so application linking will not be applicable.

Use-case:
An issue can only be closed if there's at least one issue of a specific kind linked to it. The validation is in place and working, the transition to close the issue is only available if there's one issue linked. But the person who should close the ticket cannot see the link(s) and also cannot identify the related project from which the link comes in. So the only way to know if an issue can be closed is to check whether the transition is available or not. If it is, one has to "believe" that there's somewhere a linked issue, in the background, hidden and not visible to the user.

This is not transparent at all imho.

Thanks & Cheers,
Tom

Tom104Tom · Answer

Hi Nic,

as to my understanding it is a built-in feature to link issues to other issues across multiple projects within Jira. Based on different user permissions some people will be able to link from projects from which others cannot link, because they dont have access to it. I don't see anything broken with this use-case, whereas I see a lack of transparency if the second user does not even know that there's a link, although there is and Jira is just hidding it from me.
Even on the Atlassian Support portal they show links and also the Project Key to me, altough I cannot access them (i.e. https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRASERVER-63363). This would be a transparent solution, but I don't know how they configured this.

Cheers,
Tom

Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Answer

Hmm.  In this scenario, your use-case is broken.

A user should be able to see what is blocking the progress.  If they can't see it, it's useless information to them, and actually should not be blocking them because they can't tell what it is.

In fact, it's the validator you have that is broken - that should be either limited so it checks what they can see, or, as a non-functional bodge, return an error saying there are links the user can't see (and ideally tell them who can, so they can go shout at someone who should have shared the issue at the other end of the link with them)