Merge User Accounts
YouTrack supports merging several user accounts into one. As a result of merging, any roles, group memberships, and assigned issues are transferred to the merged user account.
If any of the merged and removed user accounts has been set as assignee, reporter, or commenter — these values are replaced with the merged user account.
When a user logs in to YouTrack for the first time (for example, with an OpenID account or self-registered account), YouTrack checks if there is an existing account with the same email address. If an existing account is found, YouTrack automatically merges the new account into the existing account. For more information, see Automatic Merge of User Accounts.
Important Notes about Merged User Accounts
We urge you to keep in mind the following key points about the merged accounts:
When several accounts are merged together, all credentials from the removed accounts are transferred to the resulting account. This means that the users can still use these credentials (username or email and password) to log in to YouTrack.
If you want to prevent a merged user account from logging in to You Track, you have the following options:
Manually delete the credentials from the administrator profile of the merged account:
All the role assignments and group memberships of the merged accounts are transferred to the resulting account. When you merge an account with fewer permissions with an account that has more permissions, the merged user account gets the more advanced permissions.
If any of the merged and removed user accounts is assigned a specific role in a project, these values are replaced with the resulting user account. For example, when the user is set as assignee, reporter, or commenter in a YouTrack project.
Merge Similar User Accounts Manually
When you find two accounts with different credentials for the same user, you can merge them manually.
This process consists of two steps:
To find duplicate accounts:
Open the Users page.
Click the Find Duplicates button.
Select one of the following options:
Users with the same emails and similar names...
Users with the same emails...
Users having at least something in common...
In the first two cases, the main condition to match is the email address. Only accounts that have exactly the same email addresses are shown in search results. The first option finds only accounts with the same email address that also have similar user names.
The third option finds all accounts that have either similar user names or similar email addresses. The search result might look like this:
Search results are displayed in as visual sets of similar user accounts. To merge all similar accounts within the sets automatically, click the Merge All button. Otherwise, you can opt to review the search results and merge each set of similar users individually.
The next step is to merge the duplicate accounts.
To merge similar user accounts:
Select the account parameters that you want to preserve: username, full name, and email address.
If you want to ban the merged user account, select the Ban checkbox.
Additional settings for assigning the account status and providing a reason for the ban are shown. To learn more about banning user accounts, see Ban User Accounts.
Click the Merge button.
Merge Several User Accounts Manually
In some cases, you might want to merge several accounts even though they are not duplicates.
To merge multiple accounts manually:
In the Users list, select the accounts you need to merge together and click the Merge button.
In the displayed dialog, select the account parameters that you want to preserve: username, full name, and email address.
If you want to ban the merged user account, select the Ban checkbox.
Click the Merge Users button.
Merge User Accounts Automatically
YouTrack merges user accounts automatically. Auto-merge is performed when a user creates an account from auth-module credentials. If an account exists in YouTrack with the same email address associated with an auth module account, the accounts are merged.
Let's illustrate the auto-merge process logic with the example:
In YouTrack, there is a user with the username 'j.johnson' with 'john.johnson@company.com' as the email address. This account was imported from another bug-tracker.
After the account was imported, LDAP integration was enabled and configured for this YouTrack instance. The user tries to log in to YouTrack with his LDAP account 'john.johnson', which has the same email address.
Upon login, YouTrack scans the user base and finds the existing account.
The new account ('john.johnson' in LDAP) is automatically merged with the existing account ('j.johnson'). Because the accounts are merged automatically, a separate user account ('john.johnson') is not created. The credentials used for this account (username and password) in the LDAP directory service are added to the existing account.
As a result, the user can log in using both 'j.johnson' and 'john.johnson' credentials. The original account for 'j.johnson' is shown in the list of available users.