JIRA allows you to vote for a particular issue — "voicing" your preference for that issue to be resolved or completed. JIRA also allows you to watch a particular issue, signing up for notifications of any updates relating to that issue (provided an appropriate notification scheme has been set up for the project by your JIRA administrator).
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.
The voter and watcher lists are shown in at the right of the screen when viewing an issue:
Screenshot: an Issue's 'Votes and Watchers' section
You can:
- click
to instantly vote for the issue.
At any subsequent time when logged in, click this again to remove your vote. - if you have the correct permissions, click the hyperlinked number of votes to view the list of people who have voted for the issue.
- click
At any subsequent time when logged in, click this again to stop watching the issue. - if you have the correct permissions, click the hyperlinked number of watchers to view and edit the list of people who are watching the issue. The Watchers form will appear (see screenshot below). You can type the required username(s) into the field provided, or click the 'user-picker' icon to select the username(s) from a list:
Screenshot: Watchers List
Permissions
JIRA incorporates two permissions to govern who may view/edit the voter and watcher lists:
- View Voters and Watchers — permits a user to view both the voter and watcher lists
- Manage Watcher List — permits a user to view/edit the watcher list
These permissions are granted by your JIRA administrator, through a Permission Scheme.
Please note: It is not possible to edit the voter list.