Deprecating user entity property searches for voters, watchers, and creators

JQL searches that use user entity properties with the voter, watcher, or creator fields are being deprecated. If you maintain apps or custom integrations that rely on these searches, you must update your queries before support is removed to ensure your data remains searchable.

What's changing Jira is deprecating support for user entity property searches on the voter, watcher, and creator fields.

• Impact: After the removal date, any JQL queries or API requests attempting these searches will be rejected with an UnsupportedOperationException.
• Note: User entity property searches for other fields, such as assignee and reporter, remain fully supported.
• Deprecation date: November 16, 2026

What you need to do

Review your apps and integrations for user entity property searches on the deprecated fields and migrate them. Use custom fields when the data must be searchable through core JQL, issue entity properties when the data is issue-scoped, or app-managed storage when the data is application-specific and does not require native JQL support.