How do I assign issues to multiple users

JIRA is designed so that issues must be assigned to a single individual to prevent tasks from being overlooked. A team lead or manager should assign issues out to individuals, or your users will pick from a list of issues that they have the option to take on.

However, if you want to configure JIRA to allow issues to be assigned to multiple users there are a few option for doing so:

It is easy to still setup a queue the a group can pick from, or affiliate an issue with group in addition to having it assigned to an individual within that group:

Managing Issues via a Queue

You can configure your JIRA project to assign issues to an 'Unassigned' "queue" by default, which your users can then pick issues from.

To do this, set up the following:

1. Configure your JIRA project to allow the 'default assignee' to be 'Unassigned' (see Defining a Project).
2. Ensure that 'Allow unassigned issues' is set to ON in your General Configuration settings (Administration > Global Settings > General Configuration).
3. Set any issues that you want to be in the queue to be 'Unassigned'.
4. Create a dashboard page with a filter that lists all 'Unassigned' issues, share the dashboard page and request that interested members of the group display the shared page on their dashboards. See Managing Multiple Dashboard Pages for instructions.

Managing Issues via Group Ownership

You can add a custom field to store which users and groups should be associated with a given issue. This is particularly useful for projects where a team owns all issues of a particular type.

To do this, set up the following:

1. Add a group picker custom field to your issues.
2. Configure an email notification in your project's notification scheme to be sent to the 'Group Custom Field Value'.

An issue can now be "assigned" to the group by selecting the appropriate group in the group picker. An email notification will be sent to the group.

Another option is to add a user picker custom field rather than a group picker, and assign multiple users to an issue. However, you will then have both the JIRA default user field and custom user field for your assignees.

Managing Issues via a User Account

You can create a JIRA user account to represent a group of people (e.g. 'developers') and assign issues to this user.

To do this, set up the following:

1. Create a JIRA user to represent the group (see Managing Users).
2. (Optional) Create an email mailing list for this group (not a JIRA function) and set the mailing list email as the JIRA user's email address.
3. Create a dashboard page showing issues assigned to this user, share the dashboard page and request that interested members of the group display the shared page on their dashboards. See Managing Multiple Dashboard Pages for instructions.

An issue can now be assigned the new "user" representing the group and your users can track the issues on their dashboards. If you have set up a mailing list, your users will also be notified by email.

Managing Issue via Sub-Tasks

If you have a task managed by different users then you are able to break the combined task into individual subtasks with their own single assignees.