Time Tracking for helpdesk projects

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Anton
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My understanding of time tracking is that it is not a feature that is controlled on a user or role level but rather on a project level. So if a user is a member of a project that has time tracking enabled they should be able to capture time. I have been notified that standard users on my helpdesk project cannot capture time. Am I missing something?

The user is getting a “Could not initialize draft. HTTP 403 Forbidden” message when clicking on the add time option. The user belongs to all the groups and projects I belong to and have all the rights I have with the exception of project admin. This does not make sense.

Update:  I found that adding the project admin role to the user, or group, resolves this. Is this the normal behaviour? Maybe I do not understand the project admin role.

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Dmitrii Koval
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Hi Anton,

I'm Dmitrii from the YouTrack Team. Thanks for reaching out!

The "Could not initialize draft. HTTP 403 Forbidden" message is a known UX issue in YouTrack. It's a misleading error that appears specifically when a user is missing the “Create Work Item” permission in the project. The error itself doesn't tell you that's the cause, which is why this is so confusing. We're tracking the unhelpful messaging in JT-81570.

So the answer to your original question is: time tracking actually has two layers, and the second one is what you're hitting.

  • Project level: time tracking has to be enabled in the project's settings.
  • User/role level: logging spent time requires the “Create Work Item” permission, which is granted through a role assigned to the user in the project.

Granting “Project Admin” resolves it because Project Admin includes every project-level permission, including “Create Work Item”. That's expected, but “Project Admin” is much broader than what's needed here. It also covers managing the project team, custom fields, workflows, and project settings, so you generally don't want to grant it to regular users.

A few more proportionate options:

  • The default “Contributor” role already includes Read/Create/Update Work Item out of the box. If those users are assigned Contributor in the helpdesk project, they should be able to log time without any further changes.
  • If they're in a custom role that doesn't include the "Create Work Item" permission, add the permission to that role under Administration > Access Management > Roles.

You mentioned the user has all the same rights you have, except Project Admin. It's worth double-checking what role they're actually assigned in the helpdesk project specifically: open their user profile, expand the role/permission list, and confirm whether "Create Work Item" appears under their permissions for that project. If it doesn't, that's the gap, and the role assignment (or the role itself) is the right place to fix it.

Let me know if you have any questions!

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Anton
Created

Thanks for the detailed explanation Dmitrii Koval. I checked and saw that the Contributor role did not have Create Work Item access so that explains why even though they had the same (san admin) role assignments as mine it did not work.

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