User cannot be assigned Jira Service Management issues

 

Platform Notice: Cloud - This article applies to Atlassian products on the cloud platform.

   

Summary

When trying to assign a ticket, you get the error "User cannot be assigned issues."

Jira UI displaying the error message.

Why am I seeing this?

There are different reasons why you may see this message:

  1. The user you are trying to assign doesn't have the permission to be assigned issues (either the Service Project Agent and Assignable user permissions).
  2. The user does not have a Jira Service Management (agent) license.
  3. The account is a portal-only customer account.

Checking if the user lacks a product license or permission

Use the Jira Admin Helper to check if the user has a JSM license and the right project permissions.

Example of the permission helper in Jira with an example where the user does not have a license or the correct roles to be assigned an issue.

The user doesn't have a JSM license

Only agents (licensed JSM users) can be assigned issues on a service project. You need to grant the user a JSM license (agent) by going to their account profile in the site's user management area (<instancename>.atlassian.net/admin).

If you are unable to access the user management area, reach out to a site administrator or user access admin so they can grant a license to the user.

The user doesn't have the required project permissions

 If the user is not a member of any of the roles returned by the permission helper, go to Project settings > People and assign them to one of the informed roles. By default, the 'Service Desk Team' role is used to grant agents access to the project.

Checking if the user is a portal-only account

If the user you're trying to assign is an agent but you can't assign them, it indicates the agent has duplicated accounts: an Atlassian account and a portal-only customer account. For example:

Selected assignee field in Jira showing two entries for the same email.

Portal-only customer accounts are only for customer usage in the help center. You can't grant it a product license or assign issues to it. Make sure you select the right account when assigning the request.

Duplicated accounts are known to cause problems. To remove the duplicated account, check out Permission and access issues due to duplicate accounts.

tip/resting Created with Sketch.

One quick way to tell if you are dealing with an Atlassian account or with a portal-only customer account is to check its icon:

Generic person icon in front of a gray background.

Customer accounts use a gray icon.

Initials in front of a deep blue background.

Atlassian accounts use the user's initials on a colored background or a picture set by the user.


Last modified on Feb 6, 2025

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