JIRA user mentions without Browse Users permission does not send email notification

[Alex Christensen]

Currently, our uses do not have the Browse Users permission - we don't give them this because we have multiple clients in our system and we don't want them to see each other's issues.

Instead of using @ mentions, isn't it possible to use wiki markup if you know the person's username? Say my username is achristensen - the wiki markup is [~achristensen].

I swear this worked in JIRA 6.4, but our users are reporting that this doesn't work, and I can confirm in my own testing in JIRA 7 that the wiki markup doesn't seem to initiate an email notification. Did this change in JIRA 7? Is the Browse Users permission now required to even send a notfication email for a wiki markup mention?

[Jobin Kuruvilla [Adaptavist] · Accepted solution]

I am sure the behavior was the same in JIRA 6.x too. Users won't get a notification email unless they can see the issue, ie. they have the "Browse User" permission.

You can use the "Share" option to send the issue details to users who do not have access but it is not recorded anywhere.

Another option might be to use a mulit-user custom field in the "Browse User" permission and then add the users selectively on each issue before mentioning them in comments. That will open up the issues only to the users in that custom field and you can control who sees each issue.

[Alex Christensen]

Thanks for the inputs, Jobin!

I'm sure you're right - I'm probably remembering incorrectly that the user mentioning didn't work in JIRA 6. That said, I did mention a user who does have visibility to the issue, but the user who made the mention did not have Browse Users. I feel like that's a case in which the mentioned user should get an email, but I'm guessing it still requires Browse Users to work correctly.

Re: the "Share" option - I thought that, too, but this option is disabled when you don't have the Browse Users permission.

I'm curious about the multi-user custom field option you mentioned - I was under the impression you can only assign Global Permissions to user groups. Can you assign them to specific users or base them on a field? I'm not seeing that option in my Global Permissions screen - only the option to choose a permission then a group.

[Jobin Kuruvilla [Adaptavist]]

My apologies, I got mixed up between "Browse Projects" and "Browse Users" permission. Regarding "Browse Users", I guess you are right. You could use the wiki markup notation in the earlier versions.

Scrap that mutli-user custom field option because it was meant to handle the "Browse Projects" permission. In this case, you are probably stuck with giving those users access to the "Browse Users" global permission.

Why don't you use a separate group for that global permission, instead of using the same groups used in the permission schemes? That way, they can browse the users but they won't be able to see the issues created by others. Would that work?

[Alex Christensen]

Ah, no worries - I often confuse them myself. :)

So, currently, only our jira-administrators user group has the Browse Users permission. We base our permission schemes on project roles, placing user groups into those project roles for each project. So, Project A has a user group called "jira-project-a-users" and we place that group in the project role Users. Then, we assign the permission scheme based on the Users project role, giving them the permissions they need.

I also realize I wasn't totally clear in my first post - we don't even want users to see other client's users, not just other client's issues. Unfortuntately, Browse Users is all or nothing in terms of user visibility, so we decided to not give it to anyone.

Anyway, I was mostly looking for confirmation that I wasn't crazy and that using wiki markup with a JIRA username to mention other users worked in JIRA 6, but doesn't appear to work in JIRA 7 unless you also have Browse Users. You provided that confirmation, so I'll mark your answer as the solution. Thanks, Jobin!

[Jeff Turner]

We've also hit this problem: If 'Browse Users' is restricted and a restricted user types [~username] expecting that to trigger a Mention, they will be disappointed. It looks visually just like a mention but no email goes out.

I've added a comment about the lack of email on the relevant ticket, JRASERVER-7467.