User cannot be assigned, transition or edit issues
Platform Notice: Cloud Only - This article only applies to Atlassian products on the cloud platform.
Summary
When trying to assign an issue, you get the following error message:
User 'xxxxxxxxxxx' cannot be assigned issues.
When trying to transition an issue, you get the following message:
You don't have permission to transition this issue
Cause
This error can be triggered for different reasons:
- The user doesn't have the permissions to be assigned issues (Service Desk Agent and Assignable user permissions).
- The user does not have a Jira Service Management license.
If neither seems to be the case, another possibility is:
- The account you are trying to assign the issue is a portal-only customer account.
Solution
User is lacking a license or required permissions
First, to check if the user is missing a license or required roles:
- Go to Settings > System > Permission Helper.
- Fill out the form with user, issue key, and permission "Assignable user".
- Submit.
The results should let you know if the user has a license and if they are in the correct roles to have this permission. Here's an example:
The user must have a Jira Service Management license and Service Project Agent permission on this project.
If the user does not have a product license, they also cannot be an agent. You will need to grant them a license by going to their profile in the user management area (<instancename>.atlassian.net/admin), depending on the user interface of your site:
If you are unable to access the user management area, you will need to reach out to a site administrator so they can grant a license to the user.
(user) is not a member of any of these project roles: (...)
You can change this by going to the '(Project name)' project roles and adding (user) to the missing role(s)
Permission to be assigned, transition or edit issues on a project requires users to have specific project roles in it. To grant a role them, go to Project settings > People, find the user and assign them one of the informed roles.
User is a portal-only account
A user could end up with duplicate accounts on the site: one Atlassian account and one Customer account. This happens when an email address is added as a customer and later they are also invited to the site as a licensed Jira user.
Customer accounts are unlicensed users with limited access, they are only able to view requests via portal. These accounts cannot access Jira to work on tickets, and cannot be assigned issues.
One quick way to tell if you are dealing with an Atlassian account or with a customer account is to check its icon:
| Customer accounts use a gray icon. |
| Atlassian accounts use the user's initials on a color background or a picture set by the user. |
As a workaround you can go to Project settings > People and add the correct one, granting it the role of Service Desk Team.
To fully fix the duplicate account problem, a site administrator will need to access the user management area (<sitename>.atlassian.net/admin) and click Jira Service Management, which will display a list of all portal-only customer accounts, find the user and click migrate account to Atlassian account.
If you are using the new user management experience, you will find the portal-only accounts of your site by going to (<instancename>.atlassian.net/admin), clicking Products on the top bar, then clicking your site name on the left-side bar and finally, click Portal Customers:
- If an Atlassian account already exists on the site, this action will merge all information from the customer account into the Atlassian account. The customer account is also deactivated to avoid any future problems.
- If an Atlassian account doesn't exist on the site, it'll be added/created within the site with the site's default product access.