Customer Permissions - disabling account creation when Atlassian email is cc'd

[Malee]

We have a help desk that responds to external users via Outlook and when they cc our Atlassian email to create the work item it auto creates an account for the email address that is the TO recipient for that email. I'm trying to configure our permissions so this doesn't happen. 

[Malee · Accepted solution]

Just wanted to pop back in and give you an update, you are able to remove the option of external account creations via email forwarding without affecting internal accounts. :) 

Settings

In JSM, account creation is controlled at:
Settings (cog) > Products > Jira Service Management > Customer access.

Key points:

• Internal customers = users with Atlassian accounts in your organization.
• External customers = portal‑only accounts (no product access).

Disabling external account creation (or restricting it) only prevents new external/portal‑only accounts from being created. It does not remove or block existing internal employee customers.

To avoid accounts for truly external senders while keeping the portal for employees:

1. Under Customer access > External (the second screenshot that you shared):
   • Either disable creating new portal‑only accounts, or
   • Enable Only allow account creation for customers with specific email domains and list only your internal domains (for example: one-atlas-obir.com).
2. Ensure anonymous access is disabled.

With this setup:

• Internal employees (using your internal domains) keep access to the portal.
• Emails from other domains (external senders) will not result in new customer accounts.

You can always find more information regarding this feature on our official doc:

• https://support.atlassian.com/jira-service-management-cloud/docs/set-up-and-manage-help-center-access/
• https://support.atlassian.com/customer-service-management/docs/manage-customer-access-to-your-channels/

Next steps

1. Go to Settings > Products > Jira Service Management > Customer access.
2. Disable anonymous access.
3. Either:
   • Turn off new external account creation
   • Restrict new account creation to your internal email domains only.
4. Test with:
   • An internal email (should create/request as normal),
   • An external email (should not create a new customer).

[Marc -Devoteam-]

Hi @Malee 

Can you show a screenshot of you customer permissions on the JSM project and the global customers permissions.

[Malee]

These are the space settings:

This is within the Jira admin settings:

[Marc -Devoteam-]

Hi @Malee 

But creating an account (customer) is default behaviour, as this will be the reporter of the ticket.

This can't be circumvented.

[Malee]

We do not want External (outside of our company) to have access to our portals. Our helpdesk creates these tickets and are the reporters because they are fielding these help requests via email or phone call. I will reach out to Atlassian support for this. 

[John Funk]

Hi Malee,

Without seeing your setup, what if you use the To for the Atlassian email and the CC for the customer? 

[Malee]

Please see my reply to the above comment. :) 

[John Funk]

Have you tried my suggestion above?

[Malee]

In the first image attached it outlines To and CC'ing will create user accounts (That just showed up today interestingly enough).

[John Funk]

You need to implement anonymous creation of tickets if you don't want accounts created. Would that apply across all JSM portals/projects? Or just this one? 

[Malee]

We don't want anonymous creation, we do not want anyone external accessing our portals. Only accounts we've created ourselves either through Azure syncing or manual invitation. 

[John Funk]

Well, you have posed two competing scenarios that Jira is not capable of doing. It is either anonymous for ticket submissions and no account is required. Or an account must be established for each unique individual submitting tickets. 

[Malee]

We do it on a daily basis, sometimes users just don't remove the other emails when forwarding to Jira so I was trying to eliminate the ability. I will reach out to support to inquire further.