JSM agent can’t find a customer in Request participants: what to check

By Kayabyte · Updated 4 November 2026

Short answer: When one agent can’t find people in Request participants and another agent can, check the global permission Browse users and groups first. It sits outside the project, so comparing project roles won’t show it. If every agent has the same problem with one person, check that the person is a customer of this service project, then look for a stale account.

Disclosure: I make Group Participants, a Jira Service Management app, mentioned at the end. Nothing before that section needs an app. The Atlassian facts come from the support articles linked below, read on 4 November 2026. The community reports are one admin’s experience each, so treat them as leads, not rules.

Start with who’s affected

What you see	Most likely cause	Go to
Some agents can search, others with the same project access can’t	The agent lacks Browse users and groups	Check 1
The agent sees people already on the request but gets no results for new ones	The agent lacks Browse users and groups	Check 1
Every agent can find licensed users, but nobody can find one customer	The person isn’t a customer of this project	Check 2
The person is listed under Customers but still doesn’t appear	Stale account	Check 3
Customers can’t add people from the portal	Customer sharing settings, a different problem	Check 4

Check 1: Browse users and groups

Atlassian’s article Jira Cloud: Unable to Search Users in User-Picker Fields gives this permission as the likely cause when someone can’t search in user picker fields. It describes fields like Assignee; admins report the same thing in Request participants.

Go to Settings → System → Global permissions.
At the bottom, under Grant permission, choose Browse users and groups.
Choose a group that includes the affected agent. Atlassian’s article on agents who can’t mention users suggests the Jira Service Management default access group.
Select Add, and have the agent hard-refresh and try again.

Atlassian says global permission changes apply immediately, with no re-index.

Three details save time:

Permission Helper may not point at it. It works mainly at project level, as a Community answer notes. In that thread the check showed nothing missing.
Typing a full name is a poor test. Atlassian says people without this permission can still add someone by typing the exact username, but auto-suggest won’t work.
Being in the right group may not be enough. In the same thread, the agent was already in a group holding the permission. Removing the group from the permission and adding it back fixed it. That’s one admin’s report, not documented behaviour, but it’s quick to try.

Before granting it to a wide group, remember what it does: people who hold it can look up users and groups through pickers. If you’ve narrowed it on purpose, add only your agents’ group.

Check 2: is the person a customer of this project?

A person can hold the Customer role on the site without being a customer of this service project. Open the project’s Customers page and search for them. If they’re missing, add them or add their organization, then try again. This comes from a Community answer, so if it doesn’t match what you see, go on to Check 3.

If an agent can’t add them, Atlassian’s article on agents who can’t invite customers explains that an agent without site or user access admin rights can’t give an existing Atlassian account the Customer role.

Check 3: a stale account

Atlassian’s article Issues with adding users to the “Customers” section of a project covers people who disappear after a refresh or don’t appear in pickers such as Reporter. The fix depends on the account type:

Portal-only account: revoke access, then add them again.
Atlassian account: turn their site access off and on in Atlassian Administration. Suspending and restoring them also works.

If they still don’t appear, the article’s next step is Atlassian Support.

Project settings → Access → Customer permissions decides who customers can share with in the portal. If it’s customers who can’t add people, Atlassian’s article Customers are unable to add participants is the place to start. The Community answer linked in Check 2 says these settings don’t change what agents see, which fits the thread’s report that changing them didn’t help.

If you keep adding the same people by hand

Once the picker works, a team of 12 still means 12 entries on every request. Group Participants is the app I make for that. It adds the members of a Jira group as participants, by rule per request type or with an agent action.

It works with Jira groups only. It can’t add portal-only customers, because Jira doesn’t allow them in groups, so it won’t help if your participants are external customers.
It doesn’t fix any of the search problems above.
It’s new and has no reviews yet.

It’s on the Atlassian Marketplace. See also how to add a group as request participants and JSM organizations vs request participants.

FAQ

Why can one agent add participants and another can’t? Usually the global Browse users and groups permission. It’s held through groups, so two agents with the same project role can differ.

Why does Permission Helper show nothing wrong? It works mainly at project level, and this permission is global.

Why can agents find licensed users but not customers? The customer may not belong to this service project, or their account record may be stale. See Checks 2 and 3.

Do customer sharing settings affect agents? They control what customers can do in the portal. A Community answer says they don’t change what agents see in the work view.

Does the Customer role cost a licence? No. Atlassian says it’s free, unlimited, and doesn’t count toward Jira Service Management billing.

Jira Service Management, Jira and Atlassian are trademarks of Atlassian. Kayabyte is an independent developer and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Atlassian.