JIRA | user suggestion (@mention) in comments is not always suggesting correctly

[Carsten Arloth]

Hello Com,
 

when I type an '@' in the comment field, I want to get correct suggestions depending on the letters I type after it.

But it happens, that sometimes I get no suggestions. When I erase the letters I tried and begin entering another username it suggests correctly. When I do now enter the exact same letters from the first try, the user I initially tried to get suggested will get suggested as expected.

I ran Firebug to see, what goes on behind the scenes. And I recognize, that randomly there isn't any outgoing REST-API call as it is supposed to be. And more strangely, there is sometimes a response with usernames totally unrelated to the letters I inserted.

I use JIRA Software 7.0.5.

I double checked the global permissions, field configuration, user permissions and project configuration. But then that wouldn't make any sense, because the user suggestion only randomly cease to work as expected in the exact same issue.

Can somebody relate to this behavior?

Greetings.

[Luis Pontes]

I have found this exact same problem in JIRA v7.1.2#71006-sha1:8e7e309

Type @c, no results.,

Type @a, some results

Type @b, some results

Type @c again, now I get some results

Type @a again, some more results than the first time.

Looks like JIRA is racing to query users from the LDAP...

[Carsten Arloth]

Again, step by step: I type some letter while trying to mention a user. A REST-API call is sent, but the response contain the first 10 users alphabetically sorted. And all those users do not contain the letter I was "searching" for. I can wait however long I want without getting more results. If I'm adding letters no more calls are made to the REST-API. As soon as I delete all letters and start to type in a single different one, I get a successful and correct call response. When I delete this letter and type the initial letter which did not work before, I get the expected result. Summing this up: When a user can't be found. Try searching for other usernames until you get a suggestion. Then you can successful mention the user you initially wanted to. But that's an unacceptable behavior and a pain in the a** to explain to our other JIRA users without technical knowledge (wich aren't a few).

[GabrielleJ]

This is randomly happening to me and I believe it is a racing thing with some data caching involved. I haven't got the time to ponder with how JIRA implement this auto-populate feature so I maybe wrong. 

What I am doing right now is to just type 2 letters first, then wait for a few seconds for the list to be populated. Then once there is data in there, I put more letters to further filter it up. How are you searching them? Via username? email? or display name? 

[Carsten Arloth]

That's more a comment than an answer. But anyway... That doesn't work for me. As I wrote a REST-API call is sent, but the response contain the first 10 users alphabetically sorted. And all those users do not contain the letter I was "searching" for. I can wait however long I want without more results. If I'm adding letters no more calls are made to the REST-API. As soon as I delete all letters and start to type in a single different one, I get a successful and correct call response. When I delete this letter and type the initial letter which did not work before, I get the expected result. Summing this up: When a user can't be found. Try searching for other usernames until you get a suggestion. Then you can successful mention the user you initially wanted to. Just weird...

[GabrielleJ]

Is your project permission scheme for "Browse Project" configured to "Anyone" or just a group of people?

[Carsten Arloth]

Everybody can browse every project (all jira-users). But all issue permissions are specified for groups (those who are actually involved in the project development). But how does this explain the strange behavior anyway, that in the comment section in the same issue, one moment I cannot mention a couple of users and in the next moment I can mention the same users, who I wasn't able to mention before.

[GabrielleJ]

Based on your observations, they must have queried all the items first and did the parsing in the client side (jQuery like jEditable). I have the same problem on one of the websites I did before, there's only one REST API available for the client side to call so it only parsed the long list of results. I'm not solving the problem here but probably explaining it to better understand what's happening. I still have not looked at the code, but I think it will be best to ask Atlassian theirselves and I'll be interested in the answer too.