Issues and comments have distinguished settings for visibility. That is: You can specify a user group, to which an issue and/or a comment should be visible. Visibility means the reading access for an issue or comment.
Visibility can be set on different levels:
- The first level of settings is the project level. At this level, not particularly visibility is configured, but by setting different access permissions for users and groups in the project, the project's administrator can restrict visibility of all issues in the project to selected user group or/and individual users only.
These settings are made on the administration level and are out of scope for this quick start guide. We notice them here just to make clear that even if the visibility is visually set to 'All users', it is possible that such issues can be invisible for some users, because the project's access settings override the visibility settings for an issue. - Issue level visibility allows to restrict reading access to an issue within currently set project level restrictions. Visibility of an issue cannot override settings made for a project, it can only narrow the project-level settings. For example, if a project is visible to two groups only (group A and group B), then issue visibility can be actually restricted either to group A or group B, only. In some cases you will be able to set visibility to other groups, let's say Group C, but users in this group won't be able to read the issue anyway, because they do not have reading access to the project in the first place.
- Comment visibility. By default, the actual comment visibility is inherited from the issue. That is, if an issue is visible to group A only, then users from other groups will not be able to read the comment, even if the visibility is set to 'All users'.
Next important thing to notice is the list of user groups displayed for a user in the 'Visible for' drop-down. In these drop-down lists (both for an issue and for an issue comment), a user sees only groups, in which he participates, and assignees of the issue's project.
By default, issues and comments are created with the Visibility parameter set to 'All users'.
To change current visibility settings for an issue:
- When creating an issue, set a group to which the issue should be visible in the menu 'Issue is visible:' below the issue description area.
- For an existing issue, open it un the full-screen mode, and select visibility group from the menu 'Issue is visible:' below issue summary.
To change visibility for a comment, select a user group in the 'Visible for' drop-down list below the comment's text area. The option is available in all places where you can add a comment: the Issues list, the command window, and in the issue's full screen mode:
Please keep in mind that if you set visibility for a group, which does not have read permissions for the issue, members of this group still won't be able to read the comment.