user setup across Confluence and Jira Service Management

[Natascha Dabrowski]

Hi Atlassian Community,

I’m struggling with a user setup across Confluence and Jira Service Management (JSM) and hope someone has solved this before.

We already had a colleague working with Jira Service Management, where he:

• creates tickets
• views and processes his existing tickets

All his tickets are linked to this original Jira user.

Now we added the same colleague to Confluence, but did this via Global User Management.
Since then, Jira Service Management shows two separate users:

• the original Jira user (with all existing tickets)
• a second user coming from Confluence, which appears as an external user

This causes multiple problems:

• The Confluence user is treated as an external customer in JSM, which is not correct
• The colleague now technically has two accounts
• Existing tickets are still linked to the old user
• It’s completely unreasonable for the user to remember which account to log in with where

What I want to achieve:

• One single user account
• Access to Confluence
• Ability to create, view, and work on Jira Service Management tickets
• All existing tickets should remain correctly assigned and visible

My questions:

• What is the correct way to set this up?
• Is it possible to merge these users or convert the external user into an internal one?
• Do Jira Service Management and Confluence need to share the same Atlassian account/license setup for this to work properly?

Any best practices or hints are highly appreciated.
Thanks a lot!

[Tomislav Tobijas]

Hi @Natascha Dabrowski ,

Are you saying this user was initially portal-only customer and now they have Atlassian account for accessing Confluence?

I mean, there cannot be two separate Atlassian accounts associated with the same email address.

If we're talking about portal-only customers, you can navigate to admin.atlassian.com > Apps > Sites > *select site > Jira Service Management > Portal-only customers. Then:

1. Search for the duplicated user (the external/portal-only account).

2. Click the three dots next to their name and select "Migrate to Atlassian account".

3. This will deactivate the portal-only profile and migrate requests/tickets to the Atlassian account, consolidating everything under one user.

Some of the best practices would include always adding internal users (employees) via Atlassian account provisioning, and not as portal-only customers. We even tend to do that for external customers (but we don't have a very large pool of those)

There's also this article that might be helpful: Duplicate Account Issues in Jira Service Management Cloud 

Hope this helps.

Cheers,
Tobi

[Natascha Dabrowski]

Hi Tobi,

thanks a lot for your detailed explanation. It really helped clarify the intended setup.

To answer your question: yes, the user originally existed as a portal-only customer in Jira Service Management and later received an Atlassian account via centralized user management to access Confluence.

I followed the migration approach you described. I migrated the portal-only customer to an Atlassian account and suspended the second user that appeared as an external user, even though this is an internal employee using the same email address.

However, after these steps, the user can no longer log in at all, neither to Confluence nor to Jira Service Management.

I have already reactivated the account, but the user does not receive any email notifications. I also no longer see the user in Jira Service Management, while the user is still visible in the global administration.

At this point, I am struggling to understand why the remaining Atlassian account still cannot access the products or why the login is not working.

Any clarification on what might be missing here, such as site access, product access, or another required step after the migration, would be greatly appreciated.

Best regards,
Natascha

[Tomislav Tobijas]

Hey @Natascha Dabrowski ,

Glad my initial reply helped.

As for the second part, have you checked if both accounts use the same email address? I mean, that shouldn't be the case, as two different Atlassian accounts cannot be associated with the same email (I believe that's stated above as well).
Meaning, I'm not even sure if you can migrate a portal-only account to an Atlassian account if one with the same email already exists. 🤔

Now, if you have that 'old' account which is currently active - you can check the user directory and see if they have access to the app (in your case, JSM): Give users access to apps 
So, navigate to Directory > Users > *select user > grant them JSM Customer product/app role.

When users get access to the app, you will probably need to add them to the JSM space as well: Add a customer to a service project 
This really depends on how JSM/space is configured 👀

Finally, if everything is configured properly, they should receive the same notifications as before migrating portal-only account.

Note that this is a bit hard to troubleshoot as I cannot see how things are configured and which permissions are set, but if you're an app admin, you could also reach out to Atlassian Support to see if they can help. If you grant them site access, they can probably give you a straight answer on what's going on and how to fix it.

Cheers,
Tobi

[Natascha Dabrowski]

Hi Tobi,

This is what finally worked for us. It usually resolves the issue if done in this exact order.

Step 1: Use the correct login path
Do not start with the Jira Service Management portal.
Instead, go to:
https://id.atlassian.com/login

Enter the email address and click "Forgot password" (even if the user never set one).
This triggers a proper Atlassian account activation.

Step 2: Access the Service Portal afterwards
After the user can successfully log in, open:
https://<your-domain>.atlassian.net/servicedesk/customer/portals

In about 80 to 90 percent of cases, access works after this.

If this still does not work (rare, but possible):

Admin workaround:
Go to Admin > Directory > Users
Completely remove the user
Make sure the user is also removed from Atlassian accounts, not only from Jira Service Management
Wait 5 to 10 minutes
Recreate the user as a Jira Service Management customer
Send the service portal link again

thank you so much for your help!

greetings, Natascha

[Tomislav Tobijas]

Thanks for sharing these detailed steps @Natascha Dabrowski !

Glad you managed to resolve this 🙌