Limitation in changing jira usernames?

[toshio_kikuchi_sony_com]

Hi,

We are using Jira Software (8.4.3) along with Crowd user directory.
Recently we happened to change usernames of several user accounts in Crowd.

We noticed that new usernames are

• reflected to Assignee, Reporter, or other fields having "User Picker" type
• NOT reflected to mentions (@username) in descriptions or comments

So my questions are:

• Are these expected behaviors?
• Are there any other cases where username changes are NOT reflected?

Thanks and regards,

Toshio

[Shannon Wright · Accepted solution]

I just tried in my Jira.  Here is what I did.

• I have a user, Amy, whose username is , amy. 
• I added in description, @Amy and it worked fine, linked to the user
• I then changed that username to, justamy.
• I went back to the ticket and the entry I had for @Amy did not work anymore.

Is that the experience you are having?  

If so, it appears that the underlying code to link to the user profile is not dynamic.  It's more like a hard link for that specific name.  Once that name is changed, the link breaks.  When I went back to the ticket, it had [~amy] instead.  

But if I typed in @justamy, it worked again as expected.

[toshio_kikuchi_sony_com]

Yes, that's exactly what I've seen in our Jira.

Perhaps Atlassian's decision is to reflect username changes to fields with "UserPicker" type only, as it can easily be implemented by SQL queries.

Updating some part of text fields should be more complex and CPU-consuming task.

Thanks,

[Shannon Wright · Accepted solution]

I haven't renamed usernames before and would need to test.  

One thing you could try would be a reindex on the system.  The user picker could be looking directly at the directory and possibly the @ mentions are using the index.

Administration > System > Indexing

[toshio_kikuchi_sony_com]

Hi Shannon,

Thanks for your idea.

But unfortunately @ mentions did not reflect new usernames even after I performed reindex - though not sure if this is by design or not.

Regards,