Why is the Owner of a Jira Align Feature removed during sync with Jira when an update is mad?e

[Rebecca Hylek]

I'm a Jira Site Admin and Jira Align Super Admin.  We're using Jira Cloud integrated with Jira Align.

Scenario:

• Program Lead creates a Feature in Jira Align and assigns himself as the Owner.
• Sync takes place between the Jira and Jira Align, the Owner is removed by the Externa  System.
• Owner is added back in Jira Align and stays in place until an update is made the feature, when it's removed again.
• Information on the user:
  • Jira Align Role: Program Lead, he is a member of all teams, the program, and the portfolio that the feature is being created for.
  • Jira Cloud: User is a member of the Program project team with editing permissions and a member of all teams within the program with edit permissions.

Steps to troubleshoot:

• Confirmed the user is associated with the right teams, programs and portfolio in Jira Align and his role on each of the teams is correct
• Confirmed the user is associated with the right projects and project teams in Jira and his role on each project has the correct permissions
• Confirmed the users Jira Align email account is correct and matches his profile in Jira
• User updated the feature in Jira Align with his name, selected "Save" then "Save and Close" as well as simply using "Save and Close".  Same result both ways.
• I updated it for him in Jira Align, following the same steps, with the same result each time 

Does anyone know what may be causing this user to drop from the feature?

[Rae Gibbs · Accepted solution]

@Rebecca Hylek I have tried the same steps in my instances and am unable to recreate the issue. Here are a few things I can think of to check. Essentially what is happening is Jira is rejecting the update of the Owner field for some reason.

• Does the same happen if a different user is selected as the owner?
  • If not, then it is something specific with that user. Up until the last several months, it was possible for users to get duplicated in Jira Align. If a user did not make their email address visible in their Jira Profile and got assigned to an issue, the connector would bring that user into Jira Align. If that same user was already manually added as a user to Jira Align, since the email address coming over from Jira was masked (not made visible), the connector would not be able to identify the email address already existed for a user, thus creating a duplicate user; one where the email address was visible and another where the email address would be an alphanumeric string (as displayed in the screenshot). If this did happen and the correct steps were not taken to properly correct the issue, then it's possible it could result in the behavior you're describing. Here is a Community Article that covers the correct steps. Basically the account left standing HAS to be the one that came over from Jira.
  • If the same thing happens for other users, is the Assigned field present on the  Jira Epic screen?
  • 
• Have you tried checking the logs in Jira Settings of the connector to see if there is an error returned?
  • I would recommend checking both the Issues and Jira API log. If there is an error, it should give some sort of indication as to why it is failing to sync. You could also try checking the Audit Log of the issue but not sure if it will return why it is failing there.

[Rebecca Hylek]

Hi Rae, thank you for the response. 

Related to your first bullet point, yes, it happens when another user is entered as the Owner in Jira Align.  I used myself to test and it dropped my name.  This doesn't happen on other features when testing so that leads me to think it's an issue with the feature or Jira project and not the person.

On the second bullet point, the fields Assignee and Reporter are both present on the Jira Epic screen.

When this individual created the feature, on the initial sync with Jira the Reporter field populated with "Align Integration".  This isn't something we see often, normally it's populated with the person that created it in Jira Align.

The Project Admin in Jira recently removed the default "jira-users" group from her team members and initially we thought that was the issue.  It was added back with the appropriate permissions so we would assume once the project was correct and the user confirmed as a member of the default group, this would have resolved however it didn't.

The issue you're describing related to duplicate users was a BIG problem for us when we migrated to the cloud.  It's since been resolved with the assistance of Atlassian and the duplicate accounts were merged.  The person I'm working to resolve the current issue has one account in Jira and one in Jira Align and the email's match.

The Logs don't show an error related to the owner field however we did find repeating error related to a custom field T-Shirt.  We updated the drop down to match that in Align but that didn't resolve the user dropping from the Owner field.

The Change Log simply says "Owner Changed From [persons UID_name] To [].

I've checked with our TAM and per her recommendation, I'll open a support ticket however, if you have any other suggestions please let me know :).

[Rae Gibbs]

@Rebecca Hylek I agree with your TAM, it's best for Support to help you at this point. Those were the key things I could think of to check. I would be interested to know what turned out to be the issue. After you get it figured out with Support, if you think about it, could you respond here and let me know what was causing the issue?

[Rebecca Hylek]

I'll definitely update here.  As an FYI, the ticket number is ALIGNSP-16266.

Thank you for trying to help!!

[Rae Gibbs]

You're welcome! I can just follow the ticket if you can share it with me. I can't seem to access it by searching for it. If you go to the ticket on the right hand side there should be an option to share. You should be able to type in my name and share it with me that way. Thanks!

[Rebecca Hylek]

Thanks Rae!  Your name alone didn't pop up but I tried using rae.gibbs@atlassian.com and it said it shared.  Please let me know if you're able to see it now.

[Rae Gibbs]

@Rebecca Hylek I did get the share and have been following along. @Samit Mehta _321 Gang_ gets a gold star for the win!

I'm also thinking of creating a troubleshooting article to link from the Jira Align and Jira Integration Best Practices and FAQ Table of Contents article.

[Rebecca Hylek]

Thank you for your help Rae and yes - BIG gold star to @Samit Mehta _321 Gang_  along with our heartfelt thank you for helping with this issue!!!

A troubleshooting article linked to the Jira Align and Jira Integration Best Practices article would be awesome!  Especially since there are so many items tied to the service account!

[Rae Gibbs]

@Rebecca Hylek Interestingly enough, there is already a troubleshooting article related to this. I'm going to add some additional details to it as well.

[Samit Mehta _321 Gang_]

@Rebecca Hylek the assignment of the issue to an owner is performed as the service account that was used to configure the Jira Connector in the Jira Align's Jira Connector Settings.  Did you check if the service account has the permission to assign users?

Here's the article that describes the permissions that the service account (or a group it belongs to) must have in Jira:
https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Jira-Align-articles/Jira-and-Jira-Align-Integration-Creating-an-API-Service-Account/ba-p/1261986