Why can't the service desk team project role add watchers to tickets?

[Fahad Akhtar]

I have given the project role - jira service desk team the permission to manage watchers and view voters and watchers. Yet the service desk team members still cannot add watchers. I, as the administrator for the project is the only one that can. I am also a site-admin too. Why can't the service desk team members add watchers? What can I do to fix this problem?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Accepted solution]

It should be controlled by the permission that you have already set - "manage watchers".   I would want to check some stuff:

What is the symptom of "cannot add watcher"?  Is the link to the area not shown on the issue?  Or does it let you in, but have no "add" button?  Or does it let you get into the field, but offers no users?  Or you get an error or no actual change after you add a person to the field?

Check that your service desk team has the global permission to browse users

Compare your account with theirs - what groups and roles are you in that they are not?  (We're only interested in differences that are in the project permission scheme and the global browse user permissions)

[Fahad Akhtar]

They can hover over the eye icon, but they will start typing the name of a person like my self or someone else within the same group as them with the same permissions but no ones name will show up. But when I do it as an administrator I can type in the names of only the people in the project. If I did not add someone to the project, I cannot add them as a watcher. I will check global permissions and get back to you.