Summary

Add Watchers and Vote buttons are greyed out in Team Managed Project issues

Environment

This behavior may be seen in Team Managed projects and Company Managed projects

Diagnosis

• In Company Managed projects, project permissions govern the ability to add watchers and vote on issues.
• In Team Managed projects, the Administrator access role is required to be able to add watchers and votes to Jira issues.
• In some cases, with the administrator role, the user notices that the Watchers and Voters buttons are greyed out

Cause

In the Jira Settings > System > General Configuration, the ability to watch issues or vote on issues is disabled globally: 

https://<sitename>.atlassian.net/secure/admin/ViewApplicationProperties.jspa

Solution

Click to Edit Settings and enable the options below:

1. Allow users to vote on issues
2. Allow users to watch issues

Such that users with the right permissions are able to watch issues and/or vote on issues.