Must my user picker selections be assigned users?

[David Meyer]

My Customer list uses the organization (@company.com).
Many approvers of various types are Dept. heads who are not directly configured as users.

Can I still assign the Dept. Heads as an approver  in either:
a) custom user-picker field in Approval workflow scenario?
b) Approver field for specific Request Type scenario?

OR - for a restricted portal that is not open to all, can I list an approver (workflow)  or "Approvers" (field) as a Customer and make this work?

Seems we have to always pay for them to be a JSD User (is this because the ticket is already created so to access it they need to be a user?)...

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Accepted solution]

There's are two questions here, to my mind (I am an Engineer by training, so quite a lot of reductionism goes on in my head)

First, there is the field type.  A user field has a set of options that should represent user accounts.  It might be limited to a sub-set of the whole list, but a user field can only contain objects that are users.  If a person does not have a user account, they cannot appear in a field that is based on users.

Second is how you are using them.  Jira really only recognises two types of account - Jira users (who may be granted all sorts of different abilities - service desk agents, developers, admins, simple business users and so-on), and Customers (who only have access to the Service Desk Portal(s)).

Either way, your approvers need to be recognisable users.

[David Meyer]

Thanks, Nic.  Didn't connect the term "User" with the field type name at first but that makes total sense now.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Yes, it's exposed in the custom field type, but end-users don't necessarily get to see that on screen during create/edit/transition, so it's not obvious!