Jira user can't see or search others in user-picker fields like Assignee
Platform Notice: Cloud - This article applies to Atlassian products on the cloud platform.
Summary
If a user is unable to search for other users in user-picker fields like Assignee, Reporter, or others, they are likely missing a global permission.
This can occur in both Jira Cloud and Jira Service Management Cloud. Attempting to manually assign a user results in an error: "Assignee: Failed to set field."
Assign the global permission Browse users and groups
Permission to look up users and groups comes from the Global permission Browse users and groups.
- Go to
Settings > System
- On the left side menu, select Global permissions
- Scroll to the bottom of the permissions page
- Select Grant "Browse users and groups" to a group that includes the affected user
- Select Add
Users without the Browse Users Global Permission would still be able to add users to any user-picker field by explicitly providing the exact username - or group name as the case may be. They will not have auto-suggest working for them.
Optional: restrict what users appear in user-picker fields
Admins can choose to restrict the users shown when mentioning other users or using user fields in Jira Cloud.
If users are able to browse for some other users in user-picker fields, but can't see the specific people they're looking for, this restriction may be why.
Please refer to our article on Managing global permissions for details and resolution steps.
Common problems without the proper permissions
If your users aren't assigned the correct permissions, they will see the following behaviors:
- User cannot select or search for users from user picker fields
- Jira applications don't auto-suggest any user or group (e.g. when configuring global permissions) as the user begins typing
- Auto-suggest feature doesn't work when trying to mention other users using @... (see also: Mentions are Not Working in JIRA applications)