Want a user to be added to watcher's list for just one of the jira project issues

[Vishali]

Hi,

I have a user who needs to be added to watcher's list for few of the issues in a project. I have given him 'View Voters and Watchers' and 'Manage Watchers' permission but am not able to add him as a watcher for the issue. Error 'The user "XXXX" does not have permission to view this issue. This user will not be added to the watch list.' seen.

When I give the user 'Browse Project' permission, then I am able to add him to the Watcher's list. If I give 'Browse Project' permission, he will be able to browse all issues in that project . Is there any way, where I can restrict him as a watcher to only the issues that I have added him?

Thanks,

Rajani Balla

[Jobin Kuruvilla [Adaptavist] · Accepted solution]

You somehow need to give him browse permission. 2 options I can think of:

1. Create a multi user custom field, where people can be added on individual issues and add the user only for those selected issues. Use the custom field in the "Browse permission"

2. Make use of Issue security scheme.

[Kathy Tempesta]

I have security set up for a couple of projects so I can set Browse permissions to "anyone". The problem I ran into was that error kept popping up when I tried to add watchers who weren't explicitly members of the project. The workaround I found was to add an "Add Watcher" transition in the workflow that went to the same status it started in but pops up a custom transition screen I made that just has the Watcher field on it. For some reason, the error doesn't come up when I add watchers this way.

[Brant Schroeder]

He has to have browse project permission to see issues in the project.  Without that then he can not see the issues.  So you need to give the users browse project access on the permission scheme.  You can then use issue security so the user can not see issues unless they are added to the issue as a watcher.  This will prevent them from seeing other issues.  Manage watchers permission is exactly that it allows the user to manager watchers (add and remove) and the view voters and watchers allows users to see it.  Those permissions have nothing to do with viewing the full issue.

Information on issue security: https://confluence.atlassian.com/adminjiraserver/configuring-issue-level-security-938847117.html#:~:text=Issue%20security%20levels%20are%20created,to%20issues%20in%20that%20project.

[diman82]

Please check my answer on another thread:

https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Jira-questions/Users-do-not-have-permission-to-view-this-issue-problem-with/qaq-p/992004

[JiraYo]

the watcher plugin by this guy is a free plugin and can do this by enabling all the checkboxes in the program settings. a real catch 22 if you ask me! nicely solved by this plugin. You can also add the watcher field to the edit menu. gold.

https://bitbucket.org/rbarham/jira-watcher-field-plugin/wiki/Home

no idea why you need a plugin to do this! adding watchers is super hard in stock config. i guess they want you to use participants instead? i dont really get the difference.

EDIT: i realized the difference now. Watchers have basically no visibility to issues on the frontend. Whereas request participants show up under the "requests" menu and they can comment on issues, etc. so watchers is not the right thing to use for what i want here i think. I dont even see the point of watchers then.

[ION Information Systems]

I have the same error, but I can't explain why.

The user is in a group, the group is listed in a project role for a specific project, and the project role has Browse Project permission in that project's permission scheme, should him be able to see the issue?

[Stephen Hayden]

Yeah, we accomplish this by adding a 'Manage Access to This Ticket' Transition, allow users to select users or groups to open the ticket up to.

Someone who can see the ticket would then need to opt them into it. Would be nice if watchers could be assigned permissions.

Edit: oof, just noticed how old this question was.