How to manage huge list of assignees?

[Bo Reitz]

I have a really hard time assigning jira issues because the list of assignees contains hundreds of names. It's very tedious to have to scroll the list to find the right assignee. Is there a way to change the assignee input from a list control to an text field with auto complete? If not can I restrict my view of the list to show only the 12 or so folks I assign to?

[Bo Reitz · Accepted solution]

I was just upgraded to jira 5.1, and the new version fixes the issue by letting me type in the name of the assignee. This is a great improvement.

[Nadine]

You could also use workflow properties to limit the list of assignable users depending on project role and status:

Create a draft workflow -> click on "Steps" -> choose the relevant status and click "View properties"-> add "jira.permission.assignable.projectrole.<ID of the assignable projectrole>" as the property key -> publish the workflow

Unfortunately, this only seems to work on status, not on transitions though.

[Mark Symons]

There are some non-commercial plugins that might help.

User Picker From Project Role - Issue Alternative Assignee

The wiki describes this as a plugin in search of a new owner.. but I did just get it working with no problem at all, using an auto-assignment based on a custom field

JIRA Misc Workflow Extensions

I use the the "Assign to Role Member" post function to auto-assign resolved issues to the correct test queue (ie, depends on the project).

CustomWare JIRA Utilities

Feature relevent here: 2 Custom Fields that allow users to be selected from a particular group. This sounds like a great way to limit visible assignees. But I list it last because this particular feature is broken, at least on JIRA v4.4.x.

The issue is logged as CWJIRAUTIL-46 and has been fixed for v1.0.10.. but this version had not yet been released. Seeing as how the issue was resolved in December 2011 I am going to take a stab in the dark and guess the lack of urgency is due to JIRA v5.0.x (requiring the plugin v2.0.1) not being affected. Can anyone confirm or deny this?

[Jobin Kuruvilla [Adaptavist]]

You can restrict the list of assignees using the "Assignable User" permission in JIRA. See https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRA/Managing+Project+Permissions

[Bo Reitz]

It's a big project. There are lots of possible assignees including developers, testers, and tech writers. I don't see how this will help unless there's a way to restrict the assignee list by role. For example it would help if only the UX designers showed up in the assignee list for UX tasks. Is that possible?

[Dieter]

If "UX Designers" were a group you could add a group custom field to your project, grant the assignable permission to this field temporarily as Jobin suggests and bulk update all UX tasks with the group custom field set to "UX Designers".

[Thomas Schlegel]

You can type the first letters of the assignee's name in the assignee list control. The list will get much shorter then.

[Bo Reitz]

That helps a little bit, but it doesn't work in my favorite browser, Chrome. I would rather not have to switch browsers for this. Also there are 28 assignable people whose names start with J so even in Firefox I have to scan the list to find the right name.

Thanks.

[Thomas Schlegel]

So type the second letter after 'j'.