"You don't have permission to complete this Sprint" error in Jira Cloud

Summary

Even if they have appear to have the correct permissions, Jira users may encounter an issue where they cannot complete a Sprint on a specific board. When the "Complete Sprint" button is pressed, the following error appears:

"Sprint can't be completed - You don't have permission to complete this sprint. Ask your admin to grant you 'Manage sprints' permission."

Users will also have problems trying to Start the sprint, and may not be able to add or remove work items from the sprint as well.

Solution

Check the user's manage sprint permissions using REST API

Most commonly, a user lacks the Manage sprint permissions on a project that is unexpectedly included in the sprint, based on board filter JQL or other factors.

Admins can request the following endpoint to obtain the Original Board ID, Original Board filter, and all Project IDs where the user lacks the permissions to complete a Sprint. This endpoint requires you to input:

• The User ID of the affected user (instructions to retrieve a User ID can be found here)

• A Sprint ID (instructions to retrieve a Sprint ID can be found here)

Within the output, one of the returned data points is projectIdsWithoutManageSprintPermission.

This will include a list of all project IDs from your Jira instance where the affected user lacks Manage Sprint permissions.

Assign manage sprint permission in the related projects

Once you have the Project ID(s) from the previous output, you can compare them with the list of projects in your instance via REST API. You can either:

• Get a paginated list of all of your Jira projects

  • OR

• Request projects one at a time using a project ID

Once you know which projects need to have their permissions adjusted, you can add the Manage Sprint, Schedule Issues, and Edit issues permissions to the affected user on those projects:

1. Navigate to the affected project in Jira

2. Select Project settings > Permissions

3. Select Actions > Edit permissions

4. Update each of the mentioned permissions to include the affected user individually, or to include a group or project role that the user belongs to

Note: If the issue still persists after performing the steps above, please contact Support.

Why manage sprint permissions must be added to additional projects

Users trying to start, edit, or complete sprints on a board must have two permissions:

• Manage Sprints

• Schedule Issues

These two permissions must be granted to users on:

• All projects that have issues in the sprint

• All projects that are included in the board where the sprint is being managed

Often, the board filter includes more projects than are actually represented by issues in the sprint. The above API endpoint helps to identify which projects are included in a sprint, and why permissions aren't sufficient for affected users.