How to use Assignee with users without account

[Il Lp]

Hi,

For one of the projects I'm working on Jira is used as a bug-tracking application. However, not everyone can be given a account. 

I've used the label-field so far as an alternative for the "Assignee"-field. But as we are adding more and more bugs this becomes less managable because labels are also used for other stuff. Which makes it less easily visible to see who's currently responsable for which bug.

Is there a somewhat more elegant way around this (except obviously for creating more accounts)

[Joseph Pitt]

I think the service desk has a field for the customer. But the Assignee has to be a JIRA user. The assignee is the person working on the issue, or is supposed to be, so it would need to be a JIRA user. 

[Nic Brough [Adaptavist]]

Your assignee must be a user.

As Joe says, JSD allows for another type of user, the "customer", but for JIRA to work properly, your assignee must be a user.

The only "elegant" solution is for you to use it properly, and grant accounts to those who actually need them, either as JIRA users, or JSD customers.