user setup across Confluence and Jira Service Management

Question

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 · Answer

Thanks for sharing these detailed steps @Natascha Dabrowski !

Glad you managed to resolve this 🙌

Natascha Dabrowski · Answer

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 · Answer

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