Upcoming changes to username mentions in wiki markup in Jira Cloud

[#1]

Hello Community,

I’m Nikhil, a Product Manager in the Jira Cloud team. I’d like to share upcoming changes to username mentions in wiki markup in Jira Cloud. 

What’s changing?
Username mentions in wiki markup text, for example [~nkulkarni], will no longer work in Jira Cloud products.

Why is Atlassian doing this?
Atlassian is making a number of changes to our products and APIs in order to improve user privacy in accordance with the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). We had previously announced that we are moving away from usernames in Atlassian Cloud products and recently announced removing user name support completely from Jira Cloud webhooks and Jira Cloud REST APIs. The current changes are in line with our username removal plans.

What do I need to do?
If you have any bots or APIs that write wiki markups with username mentions, we recommend updating them to use account ID mentions (e.g. use [~accountid:account-id-string] instead of [~nkulkarni]. You can refer to our API documentation for more details. 

When you want to mention your team members while typing a comment or using any other field with wiki markup, simply use the user picker instead.

When will this happen?
These changes will start rolling out February 10, 2020 onwards and we expect to complete this over the next few weeks. 

Thanks, and let me know if you have any questions regarding this update,

Nikhil

[Sri Kumar]

Hi @Nikhil Kulkarni ,

Thanks for the update. It actually helps a lot (preserving the content ownership) during the Migration from Server to Cloud. 

Just curious on how this will work during the cloud to server Migration. Do the Account id's still be taken to the server as a reference for content ownership and can that be changed by customer in Server or it will remain intact.

-Sri

[Ben Kelley]

Hi @Sri Kumar 

Note that this change is only about how Jira Cloud treats user mentions in wiki text, and doesn't affect ownership of anything.

The editor in Jira Cloud has created user mentions referring to account IDs in wiki text for some time now. For customers wanting to import this data in Jira Server, there is a plugin available on Atlassian Marketplace that allows account ID based user mentions to display.

This change is to do with Jira Cloud no longer supporting wiki text with user mentions referring to user names.

Edit: See https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/1221117/cloud-compatibility-for-jira?hosting=server&tab=overview

[enigma]

Hi @Sri Kumar ,

In case a customer executes a cloud-to-server migration, then they should use this pluging https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/1221117/cloud-compatibility-for-jira?hosting=server&tab=overview, which converts account-ids to more user friendly text in wiki-makrup fields.

- Mostafa 

[Taranjeet Singh]

Thanks for this update on username mentions in wiki markup in Cloud.

[Alex Dueppen]

I know that this change has already been made, but will mentions in the format of [~account-id-string] also work on Jira Cloud?

[Ben Kelley]

Hi @Alex Dueppen . For the moment no, as until we remove support for user names, that would be ambiguous. I guess it is something we can consider for the future though.

[Jason Fingerhut]

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[Ben Kelley]

Hi @Jason Fingerhut . That issue seems to be for JSD Server. This change only affects JSD Cloud.

[Jason Fingerhut]

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[Ben Kelley]

Hi @Jason Fingerhut . The ability to search for users and mention them in a ticket definitely behaves quite differently between Server and Cloud. There are certainly limits on the visibility of requests in JSD.

Unfortunately the fuller workings of who does and does not appear in the user picker is beyond my scope. I would suggest that if this is a concern in Cloud, you should explicitly raise a support ticket for your JSD Cloud instance. Any change in JSD Server behaviour in this regard won't be reflected in Cloud. My understanding is that there are situations where it is desirable for certain people not to see other people's tickets, but I am by no means an expert in this area. This is why I suggest contacting support.

I appreciate that the wiki text mention is a workaround for this particular issue. Keeping in mind that Jira Cloud APIs no longer return user names, my only suggestion is to mention users by account ID (as described in "What do I need to do?"). Of course this section is targeted at application integrations, where knowing someone's account ID is just an API call away. I understand that this is not a particularly good workaround for agents typing in tickets.

[Jason Fingerhut]

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[Jason Fingerhut]

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[Nikhil Kulkarni]

Hi @Jason Fingerhut, 

Sorry to hear about the inconvenience you’re facing. 

Like my colleague Ben suggested earlier, you could try mentioning users by account IDs (as described in “What do I need to do?“). If that doesn’t work for you, please raise a support ticket for your JSD Cloud instance so that the right team can look into this and provide appropriate advice.

Thank you and have a good day!