Help Needed: Two Users Can’t Access JSM Customer Portal Despite SSO

[Veronika Makendzhieva]

Hello everyone,

I’m reaching out to see if anyone has encountered a similar issue with Jira Service Management portals.

For about a month now, I’ve been working with Atlassian support on a problem affecting two external users who cannot access the customer portal.

Issue summary:

• SSO login works correctly — both users can successfully log into their Atlassian accounts.
• However, when accessing the customer portal after login:
  • They are redirected back to the Help Center / portal home page
  • They are not authenticated into the specific portal

Scope:

• The issue affects only these two users
• Other users (including similar accounts) are not impacted

What has been verified so far:

• The users were not migrated from another site
• They have been removed and re-added to the site
• The issue persists in:
  • Incognito/private mode
  • Different environments/devices
• SSO is functioning correctly on the Atlassian side
• The issue appears specific to the portal access flow, not general authentication

Additional observation:

• Each affected user had two email addresses associated with their Jira account
• My assumption is that SSO authentication may be conflicting between the two identities
• I have removed (suspended) the unnecessary email accounts, but the issue still persists

Has anyone experienced something similar or found a workaround?

Any insights would be greatly appreciated.

[Calvin]

Okay this is a shot in the dark but in the User Management in the "Jira Service Management" area (not in users where the Atlassian accounts are), search for the email, on the click on the 3 dots and "migrate to Atlassian account".

My guess is that its taking their customer account ahead of their Atlassian account and redirecting them to the portal, and by removing/migrating that one, it will then use the Atlassian account when going to the page.

I'd also guess its happening to these two users because they created a customer account in the past, maybe via email to your Service Management.

[Veronika Makendzhieva]

Hi, Calvin,
I can't find these two emails in the menu mentioned.

[Marc -Devoteam-]

HI @Veronika Makendzhieva 

Can you add them to a non SSO policy in admin, can they login to the portals now?

If this is the case it might be an issue with the SCIM link of the user. You can remove this via the API.

https://developer.atlassian.com/cloud/admin/user-provisioning/rest/api-group-admin-apis/#api-admin-user-provisioning-v1-org-orgid-user-aaid-onlydeleteuserindb-delete 

Or change the email address of these users and then re-claim these 2 users and see if it works ok then.