API call to get teams stopped working all of a sudden

[Patrick Wende]

Dear Team,

until the end of February, I was able to get all our teams via the official Teams API as described here:

The Teams REST API

The API Call looks like this:

https://api.atlassian.com/public/teams/v1/org/c5bcf8ef-1be0-4e24-8c5c-1ffa87698714/teams

The API call worked and even now it somehow seems to work since I get a "200 OK" with the JSON body as I am used to it with "entities" and "cursoer", but it is all empty.

I also tested with a new and fresh token but to no avail.

I stumbled across this thread here Solved: Get all JIRA Teams using API and tied it with the supposed change to the URI but also with no luck.

Has something changed in the API? How can I get this to work again?

Thanks and best regards,

Patrick

[Himanshu Tiwary]

Hi @Patrick Wende ,

I ran into this too recently. Same symptom: 200 OK but empty entities.

What's happening is nothing is “broken” on your side. Atlassian has locked down the Teams API endpoint. The endpoint only returns data if the token has the correct org level permissions.

Somethings I tested to get it fixed were

Ensure you’re using an API token from an Atlassian Account which has access to Atlassian Admin (org level)

Ensure the user has access to teams in admin.atlassian.com -> Directory -> Teams

If you’re using OAuth / 3LO, ensure the scope has read:teams (or the corresponding org scopes)

Double-check you’re calling the endpoint with the correct org ID

[Patrick Wende]

Thank you very much for your helpful answer. Indeed I do not have access to the org admin (anymore? I do not know if I ever even had the permissions *gg) but instead to the site admin, so considering that it makes absolutely sense that it does not work anymore "all of a sudden".

Looks like I need to decide to request org admin permissions just for that small little API call or if I go ahead taking the risk of hard-coding the groups, hoping they will not change too often...

[Gunjan Kumar]

Hi @Patrick Wende Welcome to the Atlassian community

This doesn’t seem to be a bug, but rather a change in how the Teams API handles permissions.

If you’re getting a 200 OK response but no data (entities is empty), it usually means the API call is working, but your access is limited.

From what I’ve seen, this happens when:

• The account used for the API token doesn’t have organization-level access (e.g., no access to the Teams section in admin.atlassian.com)
• Required permissions/scopes like read:teams are missing
• The teams exist only inside Jira or Atlas, but not at the organization level
• Or the organization ID might not be correct

In short, the API now only returns teams that are visible at the org level, and if not, it just returns an empty result instead of an error.

[Joseph Chung Yin]

@Patrick Wende 

The calling with the endpoint with the correct org ID is the key.  Keep in mind that Atlassian continues to locking down what APIs can obtain based on security focus layout.  Before the lockdown, it was too wide open where one can use API calls to obtain data which the account cannot obtain via the UI route.

A good place to know what changes are released/planned to be release is by checking in to the Atlassian Cloud Roadmap link -

https://www.atlassian.com/roadmap/cloud

Hope this also helps.

Best, Joseph Chung Yin

[Patrick Wende]

Thanks for the insights and link Joseph.

I tried to look up for changes to the API, but I did not put much effort into it to be honest. Considering that I am already using the correct organization ID but seem to lack the org admin permissions that seem to be required for this API call according to @Himanshu Tiwary , I guess I need to investigate in the permission aspect first :)

Thanks for the link to the roadmap, seems to be very handy.