Problem statement

Currently, the Manage Watchers action has some limitation. It is only possible to add watchers by:

• either listing specific users
• or copying users from a user picker field via a smart value, for example from the JSM Request Participant field:

  {{issue.Request participants}}
  

However, it is not possible to add to the watcher list:

• users that belong to a group
• users that belong to a project role
• the component lead
• Users from a variable that were returned from "Create Variable" option( as create variable converts everything to a string value)

Suggestion

Add more options to the Manage Watchers action, so that it is possible to add to the watcher list:

• users that belong to a group
• users that belong to a project role
• the component lead

Workaround

If you wish to copy the users that belong to a project role into the watching list, you can refer to the KB article below with 2 examples of rules that can be configured to work around the feature limitation:
https://confluence.atlassian.com/automationkb/automation-for-jira-how-to-create-a-rule-that-adds-to-the-watcher-list-of-an-issue-the-members-of-a-project-role-1277627319.html