Can you add a person to watch a JIRA issue?

Question

In some cases, I'd like to let a teammate watch an issue, and be informed of whatever is going on about that issue, even though the issue is not assigned to him/her.

Is it possible to add a person to watch an exising issue, without assigning the task to him/her?

How?

I have permission to Add Watchers, but it says that user does not exist. If admin try to add user to watcher, than there is no problem. — user26909, Dec 12 '16 at 12:58
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score 10 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 27 '15 at 17:14

Is it possible to add a person to watch an exising issue, without assigning the task to him/her?

Absolutely, this is documented within Watching and Voting on an Issue:

If you have the correct permissions (see below), you can also view the voter and watcher lists for an issue and, you can manage the watcher list — that is, add other people to the watcher list. This is useful if you need to draw someone's attention to a particular issue. [emphasis mine]

The relevant permission is:

Manage Watcher List — permits a user to view/edit the watcher list.

You can manage the list by clicking on the watcher count icon:

This feature has arrived with the latest update (that we started using this September). It was a missing feature. FYI. :) — Gürkan Çetin, Dec 13 '16 at 17:50

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 24 '15 at 12:12

2

I have added people as a watcher on particular tickets that I thought they would be interested in. You will have to add a 3rd Party plug in to do this - works fine. Check out - https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRAKB/Add+watchers+in+the+Issue+creation+screen

answered Jul 24 '15 at 12:12

AgileSteve

116
2

I'm not an admin, and we do not have the possibility for add-ons at the company. Still, useful answer. – Gürkan Çetin Jul 24 '15 at 20:13
While this 3rd party plugin is still the only way to add watchers during creation of new issues (+1), managing watchers for existing issues is available out of the box, see my separate answer for details. – Steffen Opel Jul 27 '15 at 17:39

Can you add a person to watch a JIRA issue?

2 Answers2