User Picker field doesn't display users in Jira Software cloud Free plan

[Cheryl Neil]

We have the Free plan of Jira Software Cloud product.  I'm setting up a Classic project.  I defined a custom field "Verifier" for a Task issue, of type User Picker (single user).  When I Create an Issue, the Verifier field does not have a drop-down of users I can select from.  The system field "Assignee" does have a drop-down that shows all our users.

I believe my problem is that the Free plan does not allow us to configure project permissions or roles, see https://support.atlassian.com/jira-cloud-administration/docs/permissions-and-issue-level-security-in-free-plans/

The solution appears to be to upgrade to a paid plan.  Is there any other solution (workaround) to my problem, without having to buy the Standard plan (maybe it's a "user error" case and I'm not setting things up right)?

Thanks!

[John Funk · Accepted solution]

Hi Cheryl,

I have not used the free plan so I am not sure of what the limitations might be. However, maybe you could try linking the custom field to a group in Jira.

Go to Settings > Issues > Custom Fields and search for your field.

Then click on the 3 dots menu to the right and select Context and default values.

At the bottom under User Filtering, edit the filtering to use the jira-users group. 

Give that a try and see if it works. 

[Cheryl Neil]

Followed your instructions.  For "edit the filtering", there was no "jira-users" group to select from.  What I saw:

Underneath the "Edit User Filtering" link is the text "All active users are allowed"

I clicked the link per your instructions, and a purple triangle with an exclamation point is displayed followed by "User filtering is disabled for this user picker. All active users in the system will be returned from the typeahead control."

Underneath that is an UNchecked box titled "Enable group or project role filtering."  I checked the box, and got:

"Add filters" set to "Group" followed by a drop-down with the values:

• administrators
• atlassian-addons-admin
• jira-administrators
• jira-software-users
• site-admins
• system-administrators
• trusted-users-3a... <lot of alphanumeric characters>

Going to Settings > System > Global permissions, I search (CTRL + F in browser) the webpage for "jira-users" and nothing's found--maybe it's not supposed to show up there, I don't know.

[John Funk]

In your list you should use jira-software-users

[Cheryl Neil]

When I chose  jira-software-users, the text under my Verify User Filtering:  Edit User Filtering changed from saying "All active users are allowed" to "No users are allowed".

Didn’t sound promising, but I went ahead and tried to modify the “Verifier” field in an Issue—no list of users was displayed for me to select from.

I went to Settings > System > Global permissions.  Clicked on “View Users” link under jira-software-users, got a page with a picture of a Lock picture with the text:  “You need permission.  Request access from your administrator.”  (I *am* an administrator)

The explanation at the link I gave with my original post is:

The Free plan for Jira Software and Jira Core is for small teams of fewer than 10 people who may be just getting started with Jira. Project permissions, roles, and issue-level security aren't configurable when you're on the Free plan. To take advantage of Jira's powerful project permission management features, upgrade your plan.

If you've always had the Free plan for Jira Software or Jira Core Cloud, everyone who can access that product is a project admin. It isn't possible to change the permission scheme, edit roles, or add an issue security scheme.

1. So I don’t think I can really implement User Picker field—your suggestions help confirm this, unless you have another suggestion. 
2. This is why I was asking for a workaround. 
3. The only workaround I can think of is to make a checkbox with a list of team members’ names, but that’s not the same (as you know.  I'll have to manually update the checkbox every time a user is added/deleted) and I don’t know if (email) Notifications can be set up when an Issue changes status—I haven’t gotten far enough along to try this.

[John Funk]

Sorry that didn't work. I would just go back to the All active users are allowed function then for now. I am trying to get someone with Atlassian to provide an answer on that custom field type. 

How many active users do you have in your instance? 

[John Funk]

Also, just verified from another Community Leader with a Free instance that it worked for him. You will need to start typing names of people for them to show up - they don't just appear in the list. 

[Cheryl Neil]

Typing works! When I clicked on the field (to put my cursor in it, "No options" was displayed so I thought no users were available)--I thought users would be displayed and I could select one.

Thanks so much!!

[John Funk]

Great! I should of thought of that in the first place  haha

[Samuel Westen]

Why does the native Assignee and Report fields user picker index the users available but a custom user picker field doesn't? 

Seems like a bug to me?

[Stephan Hannach]

 There is a suggestion for that:

https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRACLOUD-76073