Is it possible to control what actions "automatically" watch an issue?

[Bill Wood]

Jira automatically makes someone a watcher when they do certain actions. If you comment on an issue, or edit an issue, etc, you are made a watcher automatically (as I understand it).

Is it possible to control that, ideally at an individual level? Some people have very administrative roles in our organization where they end up entering comments on a great number of issues that they do not own, are not the assigned user, and have no interest in being notified of every change. It isn't very elegant to ask them to remove themselves as a watcher every time they make a comment.

Do you have any suggestions?

Thanks!

Bill.

[Benu Gupta · Accepted solution]

A new feature was added as part of Jira 5.0.3 that automatically makes a jira user a watcher of the issue created or commented on by that user. But if not required the user can easily disable this feature through their user profile by choosing Disabled for their Autowatch option when editing the Preferences section of their user profile.

https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRA/JIRA+5.0.3+Release+Notes#JIRA5.0.3ReleaseNotes-%27Autowatch%27issuesyoucreateorcommenton

To disable this feature globally for all existing users, a service can be configured to do the same (https://answers.atlassian.com/questions/49971/how-do-i-disable-jira-autowatch-by-default), but all new users will need to disable it themselves.

I hope this helps!

[Bill Wood]

Hi Benu, thanks for the answer. I poked around and found where users can turn off Autowatch, but it seems to be all-or-nothing. Users cannot choose to become watchers when they create issues but not when they comment on them. I'll just have to train the users accordingly. Thanks!

[Dobroslawa Wierzbicka]

On a related note: as of Jira 5.2.2 administrators can also disable the automatic watching for all users (under JIRA Admin > User Preferences). You still wouldn't be able to pick actions that will trigger the Issue watch, but users won't need to change the profile settings.