Why is my automation trying to assign to a user that doesn't exist?

[Danno]

I'm using Cloud Premium and have an automation that is failing. I want it to assign to a user in a role and it is failing with this message:

Error assigning issues

PRS-1978: (User 'rk:1bbb7c4d-929b-4b89-b108-a912d6937601' cannot be assigned issues. (assignee))

I do not understand why the user code is formatted this way although it looks like a user code I have from an outside email domain. I also cannot decipher who this user would be. I don't know what portion of the code to use.

Can someone explain how to solve this issue?

[Jan-Hendrik Spieth]

@Dannoit sounds like you ran into the same issue I did:

• seeing strange user ids that can't be traced to any user in the admin interface (in fact, for me, some ids even resolved to JSM portal customers, even though we have long deleted that product from our setup)
• "assign to role" automation trying to assign to diverse unexpected user ids, when in fact, I knew the project had exactly one user assigned to the role

I opened a support ticket, and after a while we found that the issue is that automation takes role default membership into account.

To me, this behaviour is just plain wrong. Basically, it means automation ignores a project's actual role settings.

You might want to check whether that explains your issue.

Here's the suggestion to change this:
https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/AUTO-134

If you're affected indeed, please leave your vote and comment with the suggestion. We have to convince the Atlassian team to change this!

[Danno]

@Jan-Hendrik Spieth I will investigate your theory. I've gotten so busy with everything other than my admin work except for emergency fixes that I had forgotten to try the other suggestions below as well. I will get to this and let everybody know what I find out that solves it.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Could it be that the rule was created, then the user deleted?  So Jira has nothing left but the unique key to show you?

[Danno]

@Nic Brough -Adaptavist- I think there is a distinct possibility this could be true. As I am reading this I realized I might be able to find the mysterious user in the audit logs.

Are you able to shed any light on the format of the user code? It looks to me like other user ids I have that are outside of our domain although none of those people should have been assigned to the role that the rule is working with.

I will investigate your theory and report back.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

The format is something of a nightmare, and something I'm struggling with in one of my projects at the moment too.

Jira needs a unique id for a user, but it's been through a few different ways to do it.

I think you've run into the latest way to do unique IDs and I suspect your user code to be for an Atlassian Account (The unique IDs do not necessarily ever get shown, they're internal to the system - I happen to know my current Adaptavist Employee number, because a couple of our systems do show it, but it's not used by any humans, it's used as a "foreign key" into accounting, payroll, and HR systems that all display my name/email/other.  "I am not a number, I am a free man!")

But Atlassian systems can have many different user directories, and they've used different formats of unique user key from many systems, as well as generating their own internally.

I have no idea where some of them have come from.  One of my projects currently has data that includes "people who did X, owner of Y, email address Z".  Columns X and Y contain at least 5 recognisable different patterns of unique id.

• One I know is a simple database counter
• A database generated code replacing the simple counter
• A GUID of a different pattern (I'm suspecting it's from an LDAP directory, but don't quote me)
• An id of an SSL certificate
• my job tomorrow is to try to identify the fifth which is the format you've got, and I've not got a Scooby-doo.

Given 3.5 million lines of data, I would not be surprised to find even more!

[Bill Sheboy]

Hi @Danno 

Would you please post images of your complete rule and the audit log details showing the rule execution?  Those may provide context for the community to offer suggestions.  Thanks!

Kind regards,
Bill

[Danno]

@Bill Sheboy the section of the rule that is failing is below. I am really more concerned about the user id and its format. Plus it is always the same id that fails in my original post. I can't determine who the person is that the automation rule is trying to assign the ticket to.

[Bill Sheboy]

That is curious...

I recommend working with your site admin as they can export the list of all users, including their account id, and then you can search that CSV file to find the user to investigate further.

If it is not present, I would then work with your admin to submit a ticket to Atlassian Support to investigate this.

[Danno]

@Bill Sheboy I am the site and org admin. That's what makes this such a weird issue. Can't locate the user in the export list.

Atlassian is my next stop. I was hoping for someone in the community to point me to a decoder ring somewhere.

That said if they can explain it I'll post an update.