Importing Assets with "Assigned To" using email address – possible?

[Orkhan Hasanov]

Hi everyone,
I’m reaching out because I couldn’t find a clear answer to this during my research, and maybe someone here can help.

We’re not actively using Assets yet, but we’re planning to. Today I spent a lot of time practicing and testing how it works, and I think I’ve got the logic mostly figured out. However, there’s one area I’m stuck on:

Let’s say we have an object type called Keyboards, and we want to import data using a CSV file.
We also have an "Assigned To" attribute (of type User), which is meant to show who the device belongs to.

In the CSV file, we provide email addresses for the "Assigned To" field, because in our company, users don’t always know the exact Jira usernames of employees — email is more reliable.
However, during import, everything is imported correctly, except for the email-to-user matching. The user is not assigned automatically.

What we need is for Jira to match the email to the user account (agent or customer) and assign it accordingly — without having to manually go into each asset and link the user afterward.
That would be very time-consuming and not scalable.

So, is there any way to make email-based matching work during import? Or any workaround that would help us assign users automatically based on their emails?

Additional clarification:
When I import the "Assigned To" attribute using an email address (e.g., john.doe@example.com), the value is imported as plain text and not linked to the actual user account in Jira. The email shows up, but it’s not recognized as a user object.

Is there a way to make Assets match the email address to a real Jira user (agent or customer) during import, so that the "Assigned To" field is properly linked to a user and not just display text?

Thanks in advance for any suggestions!

[Christopher Yen · Accepted solution]

Hi @Orkhan Hasanov , welcome to the community!

We do link our user to the asset using an email but do you have your users as objects in assets? or are you trying to link it like a reporter in a JSM work item? If each of your users are in assets then below is how we link our assigned users to hardware as we import hardware. 

[Orkhan Hasanov]

Hi @Christopher Yen 

Thank you so much for the quick response and the helpful screenshot!

We haven't started actively using Assets yet — we're currently in the testing and learning phase.
At this stage, we hadn’t created user objects in Assets. What we needed was simply to import our hardware data (keyboards, monitors, etc.) and link each item to its respective owner during the import process.

Everything else was importing correctly except the user. Even when we tried using email, it didn’t work.
After reading the article Marc shared, I imported the users separately, collected their Jira user IDs, and then added those IDs as a column in my hardware import CSV file. And voila — it worked perfectly!

Thanks again for your support!

[Marc - Devoteam · Accepted solution]

Hi @Orkhan Hasanov 

Welcome to the community.

See this KB on how to match an email address to a Jira User.

Set the Attribute Assigned User to a user object and create an automation based on the KB to set this Attribute, based on the email address set in the Attribute Assigned Email.

[Marc - Devoteam]

I forgot to link the KB.

https://support.atlassian.com/jira/kb/match-users-in-csv-import-to-user-type-attribute-of-assets-objects/ 

[Orkhan Hasanov]

Hi @Marc - Devoteam 

Thanks a lot for your reply and the KB link!

I’ve read the article you shared. After retrieving the user IDs, I simply included them in the CSV file prepared for Assets import. Once I imported the file, the “Assigned User” field was correctly populated based on the email-to-ID match — exactly as I needed.

Really appreciate your help!