Granting Watchers Browse Permission

[Kelly Hawke]

How do you specifically grant Watchers the Browse permission.  I don't see an option to select it in the Permission Scheme.

Thanks..

[Alex Koxaras _Relational_]

Hi @Kelly Hawke 

Watchers are not a project role, or a group, or a custom field. You can't grant them this permission. However, if a user has the browse project permission (we don't take into account the security level) he/she can become a watcher.

What exactly are you trying to achieve? Can you please elaborate?

Cheers,
Alex

[Kelly Hawke]

We have a project that we need to narrow access to the Reporter, ideally Watchers, and those in a specific role.  I can accomplish all of that...except Watchers.  

We don't want the tickets open to everyone (as we do have a fairly large instance with over 400+ projects).

[Alex Koxaras _Relational_]

Unfortunately you can't do that. At least not in the way you think of it. My last statement about watchers stands.

What you can do is to:

• Create a new project role called "Viewer" or "Watchers" (I wouldn't use the latter, just to avoid confusion)
• Create a new permission scheme
• Grant the browse project permissions to the reporter, assignee, all the necessary roles, and to the new project role of "Viewer"
• Grant this project role to all involved people (watchers). You either do this individually, or create a group with all them inside and then granting the "Viewer" project role to that group

Let me know if the above helps.

Alex

[Kelly Hawke]

OK...thanks.  That won't work either in my use case....but I really appreciate the confirmation that I wasn't loosing it and not seeing how to accomplish this.

I also had this question a few weeks ago and couldn't find a solution.  Now I know there isn't one.

thank you!!!

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

It's of no help here, but I think it's worth explaining why watchers are not available in permissions.  The very short story is that it's a security failure. 

In many cases, people can watch what they want, so allowing "browse", or any other permissions, to a watcher explicitly means "I can go see or do whatever I feel like, including all the secured stuff".

Jira's watchers permission has some flexible stuff, but it does not allow for security problems, it goes with the simple "you can only watch what you can already see" route.  Which precludes adding watchers who can't see the issue already.

You did not explain your use-case much, but I think there are ways you can get there.  Could you explain it a bit more?  Simplest guess - could you add a multi-user picker field and include that in the permissions?

[Oskar Austegard]

While you can't use members of the Watcher's group (at leas not directly), you CAN use another "User custom field value" -- i.e. you can create a "User Picker (Multiple users)" Custom Field and add that to the form, then grant it permissions like e.g. the below: the Reviewers will then only have access to the tickets for which they're added as a Reviewer (unless also granted access via other memberships)