Set assignee to Non JIRA user

[Shawn Thiel]

I would like to set the assignee to an individual that would not have access to JIRA.  This individual would be a person at a third party vendor.  

I am primarily looking to do this as we work on projects and issues arise, we create an issue ticket and link it to the parent project.  

I would then assign the issue to the vendor company and the individual at that company that will be working on the issue.  

This would give me reportability of all open issues for a project that is being handled with a vendor.  

[Joe Pitt · Accepted solution]

The assignee must be a JIRA id. The work around is to create a dummy id. However, I suggest creating a field called Outside Contact and put the vendor there and assign the issue to someone real that is responsible for getting the fix from the vendor? In my experience issues not assigned to a REAL person are not worked by ANYONE, because they don't see it in their queue.

[Paulo Junior]

Hi Shawn,

I believe a better option would be creating a User for that vendor and adjusting the permission schemes, in order to grant him access only to the projects you want.

[Shawn Thiel]

Paulo and Joe,

Thanks for the feedback.  At this time I have created 2 custom fields.  1 for the Vendor name and the other for the contact person at the vendor that will be doing the work.  

You are correct about making sure it is assigned to a JIRA individual so that they can track and make sure the task is completed with the vendor.  

Using this approach will also allow us to report on vendor issues and track for any patterns to bring to their attention.