Jira Tips and Tricks Collection: Using Service Accounts

[#1]

Tip Relates To

Application Type	Jira, Jira Service Management, Confluence, and more
Deployment Type	Cloud Free, Standard, and Premium*
Audience	Application Administrators, Developers and power users
Category	User Management, Integrations

Tip

If you are connecting your scripts and apps to Atlassian products with your personal user account, there's a better way! Help us avoid orphaned credentials by using a service account instead. Atlassian offers 5 free service accounts for automating tasks, integrating apps, and more. Reach out to your Jira administrator to get yours created.

Explanation

Use case: A power user creates an awesome integration between Jira and an internal application. But unfortunately, the power user leaves the company. When their Jira account is disabled, the connection using their account is severed. Prevent this and other security problems using service accounts.

• Create service accounts here: Admin > User management > Service accounts
• After, create API tokens for service accounts here: https://id.atlassian.com/manage-profile/security/api-tokens

Service accounts are for connecting apps, running automations, and using API integrations without consuming paid user licenses. Service accounts are managed just like regular user accounts, only they are not associated with an individual user. Also, service accounts cannot login to the application UI. Instead of passwords, service accounts authenticate securely using API tokens or OAuth 2.0. They can be scoped to specific actions (E.g., View issue details, Create and update user groups, Delete pages) or to Atlassian apps and individual spaces just like a user would.

Note: You must be an Organization admin to create service accounts.

Need more than 5 service accounts? Upgrade to Atlassian Guard Standard or consider leveraging paid user accounts with dedicated (but generic) email addresses. *Enterprise plans include up to 1,000 service accounts.

Resources

• Understand service accounts – https://support.atlassian.com/user-management/docs/understand-service-accounts
• A Guide to Service Accounts in Atlassian Cloud – https://community.atlassian.com/forums/Jira-Cloud-Admins-articles/A-Guide-to-Service-Accounts-in-Atlassian-Cloud-Part-1-What-they/ba-p/3185356
• Manage API tokens for service accounts – https://support.atlassian.com/user-management/docs/manage-api-tokens-for-service-accounts

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[Peter_DevSamurai]

Thank you Rachel