Hi Community,
TL;DR – We are changing user searchability in Mentions, Assignee, Reporter, and other User Picker fields in Jira's Issue View to users who have the Browse Projects permission. This provides a way to restrict user search by project.
We are excited to announce the enhancements to the Browse Users permissions. We have received several requests to limit user searches to a specific project. This is an important capability when you want to collaborate with clients or contractors on a particular project but don't want them to search for all users across the Jira instance.
In Jira Software (JSW), users often utilise two mechanisms to keep others in the loop and collaborate on issues within a project:
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Mentions: With this feature, users can ping members of their team by mentioning them in the issue description or comment. To mention someone, simply type "@" followed by their username.
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Issue fields: Certain fields like Assignee, Reporter, and Watchers make use of a User Picker, allowing users to browse and select other users.
When using these features, an auto-completed list of suggested users is displayed as the user types in another user's name or email.
The ability to see other users in Jira is governed by the Browse Users global permission. As the name suggests, this permission is applied site-wide and affects the visibility of users. As a result, Jira Administrators face a limitation when setting user visibility—they can either allow users to see everyone or no one.
Based on your frequent requests, we are working on a new feature in Jira Cloud that will allow you to restrict user mentions and searchability by projects. In a couple of weeks, we will be introducing this change.
Once this feature is rolled out, you will be able to restrict user mentions by granting the Browse Project permission to specific user groups in the project's settings. These users with the Browse Project permission will be searchable during mentions and field assignment, while the current user is still unable to search for other users in other parts of Jira, thanks to the disabled global Browse user and groups.
We value your feedback on this feature, as it is currently under development. Please let us know your thoughts.