Customer (portal-only) management in JSM - self-service on- and offboarding

[Simon Sahli]

Hi Atlassian community,

we are having around almost 3000 customer (portal-only) users in JSM and around 400 organizations. 
It´s get increasingly difficult to keep track on who gets added and removed as customers (on- and offboarded).
We are thinking about what kind of possibilities we have to make this process more automated and more self service. 
Now every onboarding comes in with a JSM request or email and offboarding's are done sparingly.

Ideally, the organizations could handle the On- and Offboarding of their colleagues themselves (with certain limitations). 
Is there any possibility to achieve a self-service portal when it comes to customer access management with JSM? Marketplace apps?

Are there any other best practices on how to deal with with the customer users and their organization in the Atlassian Cloud that you can recommend dealing with this amount of customers?

Cheers,
Simon

[arielei]

Hey @Simon Sahli 

Why do you wish to handle this? you are not paying for customers.

Please explain by giving a use case.

Thanks.

[Simon Sahli]

Hi @arielei,
I am just looking for a way to make sure that every customer only has active and relevant customer users within their organization.
Meaning that they can easily onboard new colleagues that shall use our portal and work with us and offboard users that do not work for them anymore.

Either by themselves, or if that is not possible how to best manage this, ideally as automatically as possible.

Is there any way that a customer user can see in the portal, which other users are in their organization? 
Basically list all request participants?

Thanks!

[Olha Yevdokymova_SaaSJet]

Hey @Simon Sahli 

The core of the problem is that JSM agents are creating full Atlassian accounts instead of "portal-only" accounts for customers. Smart Forms for Jira, developed by my team, provides several features that directly address this by allowing external users to submit information that creates or updates Jira issues without needing a full Jira license or even a portal-only account initially for simple submissions.

External Form Sharing:

• "Share form externally" allows generating a public URL to a form that anyone can fill out, even if they are outside of Jira. This is crucial for collecting data from external users who can stay anonymus and fill their name 
• There are two types of external sharing:
  • "External form sharing from issue": Generates a unique URL that can be filled only once within a 1-month limit and can be associated with a specific Jira issue. This is ideal for specific, one-off requests from external users.
  • "General form sharing from add-on": Provides a link that allows an unlimited number of responses with no time restrictions. This is suitable for general feedback, surveys, or ongoing data collection where users don't need a persistent account.
  • For both types, users submit information directly through the form, eliminating the need for them to create or be provisioned an Atlassian account or even a portal-only account just to submit a request.

Automated Issue Creation:

• A key feature is the ability to "Create a new issue based on the submitted form". This means that when an external user fills out and submits a Smart Form, a new Jira issue can be automatically generated, populating Jira fields with the form responses.
• This is fundamental for the "portal-only" use case because the customer's interaction starts and ends with the form submission, and an issue is created without requiring them to log into Jira or the customer portal.

Update Existing Issue Fields:

•  No Ticket Overload
  These forms can either create new Jira issues or update existing ones. For example, you could attach an offboarding checklist form to an existing onboarding issue—so you’re not doubling ticket volume.

Customer Portal Integration:

• Portal + Non-Portal Support
  You can embed forms in the customer portal for logged-in users or send external links to those who aren’t added to Jira at all.

Pre-fill Form Options for External Users:

• The add-on supports "Sending prefilled forms to users outside the Jira". This is useful for follow-up requests where some information is already known, further streamlining the user experience and reducing manual entry for both the customer and the agent.

This way, you're offering org leads a controlled self-service option, reducing manual intervention, and keeping your Jira user list clean and manageable.

Let me know if you’d like help setting up a sample flow!

[Simon Sahli]

Hi @Olha Yevdokymova_SaaSJet,

I don´t really see how a form can help for the self-service, or automated, on- and offboarding of customers?
There is already a "Customer Onboarding" request type, where customers can request to add more of their colleagues to the JSM portal with all the information we need.

Cheers,
Simon

 

[Olha Yevdokymova_SaaSJet]

Hi @Simon Sahli 

From what I understand, the main challenge you're facing is the growing volume of customers and the overhead of managing their onboarding/offboarding—especially as your team tries to stay on top of access changes across 3,000+ users and 400+ orgs.

• With Smart Forms, external users (like org leads) don’t need to be added as Jira customers at all.

• You can share a public form link that lets them submit onboarding or offboarding details—no Jira account or portal access required.

• Even better: that form can be attached to an existing onboarding issue, so you don’t need to create separate tickets for each change. It all stays in one place.

This approach allows org leads to self-serve when their team changes—without blowing up your issue count or requiring agent time to manually add/remove users.