Can't assign issues to users

[Rachmad Akbar]

I can't assign an issue to other user although I can browse their name. 

I am an administrator of the project.

I set permission to "anyone group" for "assignable user", "assign issues" and "browse projects"

The user only show up after I set the permission to "anyone group"

What should I do? Do they need to login into the system first?

Best,

Rachmad

[Andy Heinzer · Accepted solution]

Yes, new accounts need to login to Jira at least once before you can assign issues to that user.   The reason is that, you don't want to assign issues in Jira to a user that has never logged into this Jira instance.   From a project management standpoint, it can be a potentially disastrous if Jira allowed this otherwise. Because what if the user is unaware of this Jira instance, or the user doesn't know the exact credentials to login here.   Their issues would go unattended, something that is not a good experience for any project.

[Andy Heinzer]

Addendum:  Since this is also tagged as Jira Service Desk, there is an additional requirement on Service Desk projects.   In order for your to assign users to issues in a Service Desk project, those users have to be in the role of a Service Desk Agent.  You cannot assign JSD issues to Jira Core or Jira Software only users.  

This means these users have to use a license seat for Jira Service Desk.  This is explained in some more detail in Setting up service desk users.

[Deleted user]

Thanks @Andy Heinzer,

Learnt something new today! 

TIL: New accounts need to login to JIRA at least once before you can assign issues to that user.

[Rachmad Akbar]

Thanks @Andy Heinzer. I got the same root cause via permission helper.

[Andy Heinzer]

Ah,  Well that screenshot is helpful here.   Since this is a service desk project, there are additional requirements for the users that can be assigned issues as I mentioned above.  

For Service Desk projects, only Service Desk Agents can be assigned those issues.  In order to be a Service Desk Agent, you have to allocate that user a license seat in Service Desk.    See Licensing and application access for details of how to grant this user application access to Jira Service Desk.   In this case, that user would need to be belong to the group in Jira that grants application access to Jira Service Desk.   By default this group name is 'jira-servicedesk-users'  however it is possible it might be a different name, or that there might be multiple groups that grant access to this in your Jira site.

[Deleted user]

Hi @Rachmad Akbar,

My suggestion would be to set up Project Roles instead of User Groups as you can control user access on a project-by-project basis. 

Set up your permissions to utilise Project Roles instead of groups so new projects can be tailored. 

Hope this helps

[Joseph Jutras]

Thanks Andy. The "new accounts need to login to Jira at least once before you can assign issues to that user" is key.

The current error message is, "User x cannot be assigned issues". This is not at all helpful because as an administrator I have no idea why. User x's permissions look correct. A much more useful error message would be, "User x cannot be assigned issues until they have logged in once".