API Project Creation: Custom Global Roles overriding Business Team-Managed templates

[Damiano Di Battista]

Hi everyone,

I am a Jira Org Admin and I’m experiencing an issue where project roles are being "injected" into new projects created via the REST API (POST /rest/api/3/project), ignoring the specified template.

The Goal: Create a Business Team-Managed project with only the standard roles: Administrator, Member, and Viewer.

The Problem: When creating a project via API, the resulting project (which appears as Team-Managed in the UI) automatically includes several Jira Service Management roles (Service Desk Team, etc.) and, most importantly, a Custom Global Role called "Competence Center" that was created at the system level.

If I create the exact same project manually (Business > Task Management > Team-managed), it correctly shows only Admin, Member, and Viewer. The API seems to be bypassing the "Clean" template in favor of a site-wide default scheme.

My Payload:

JSON
{
"key": "NEWPROJ",
"name": "Automated Business Project",
"projectTypeKey": "business",
"projectTemplateKey": "com.atlassian.jira-core-project-templates:jira-core-simplified-task-tracking",
"description": "Created via Automation",
"leadAccountId": "ACCOUNT_ID",
"assigneeType": "PROJECT_LEAD"
}

What I've confirmed:

The API creates the project, but it seems to "merge" the Business template with our global default roles/permissions.

Manually created projects DO NOT inherit these extra roles, only API-created ones do.

Question: Is there a specific flag or a different API endpoint for Jira Cloud to ensure a "Clean" Team-Managed project creation that doesn't inherit global custom roles? Or is there a known bug where the API defaults to a different project-creation-scheme than the UI?

Any help from the community or Atlassian staff would be greatly appreciated!

[Damiano Di Battista · Accepted solution]

Hi everyone,

I have an update after working with Atlassian Support.

The Root Cause: It turns out there is currently a functional gap between the Jira UI and the REST API. While the UI allows the creation of Business Team-managed projects, the REST API (POST /rest/api/3/project) does not yet have a specific "Simplified" template key for Business projects.

Because of this, when we use a Business template via API, Jira defaults to a Company-managed (Classic) project. This is why it "injects" all the Global Project Roles (like my custom "Competence Center" role) and JSM roles that have "Default Members" defined at the system level.

The Official Feature Request: Atlassian has opened a formal feature request to expose the missing template keys: 👉 JRACLOUD-97906 (I suggest watching it if you have this issue).

Workarounds:

1. Software Template: Use a Team-managed Software template instead (e.g., com.pyxis.greenhopper.jira:gh-simplified-agility-kanban). This creates a true Team-managed project with clean roles (Admin, Member, Viewer).
2. Clean Global Defaults: As an Org Admin, go to Settings > System > Project Roles > Manage Default Members and remove any groups/users. This prevents these roles from being "injected" into new API-created projects, even if they are Classic.

I'll be using the Software workaround for now to keep the UI simple for my project leads.

Thanks to everyone who helped!

[Trudy Claspill · Accepted solution]

Hello @Damiano Di Battista 

That sounds like a bug to me.

I didn't find anything about that scenario in JAC.

I recommend that you open a support case directly with Atlassian to raise this issue and find out if it is a known defect. Please share here what you learn from Atlassian.

https://support.atlassian.com/contact/#/