Edit Assignee Using Jira REST API and User's Email

[Patricia Paguio]

Hi everyone,

I am trying to bulk import and edit issues using Jira REST API and am having trouble updating the assignee field using user's email address (all other fields are edited/imported fine).

I am using https://myinstance.atlassian.net/rest/api/3/issue/bulk to bulk import, and https://myinstance.atlassian.net/rest/api/3/issue/{issueKey} to bulk update. All other fields are getting imported fine but the assignee field is being left blank.

I have seen the assignee field be updated using user ID, however, my file contains only the assignee's email address.

I have tried updating using the following:

{"assignee": {"email": "user@email.com" }}

{"assignee": {"emailAddress": "user@email.com" }}

{"assignee": "user@email.com"}

And none of these seem to work.

Does anyone know how I can bulk import / bulk edit the assignee field using the user's email address via Jira REST API?

[David Bakkers · Accepted solution]

For Jira Software Cloud, you can't use something like an email address, you must reference the user's account ID, so the format is:

{"assignee": {"accountId": "[account_id_here]" }}

The ability to reference a user by their username (email address) or userkey were deprecated last year. Read this article for more information

[Patricia Paguio]

Ahhh that is such a shame that they have deprecated the use of username for Software Cloud when it seems the easiest way to go about updating assignees. Thanks for the clarification David!

[Sagar Gadekar]

This works fine with edit-issue api request, except the square bracket.