Allow users to add other users to a project

[Katie Hill]

I am the project lead and owner of our JIRA Cloud setup. I need to allow my colleagues to be able to add other user to projects, I can't work out if this is even possible.

Use case - I was on annual leave for the last 3 days and my colleagues were asked by a client to add other people to the project. They were unable to do this despite being 'Administrators' (I assume Administrator does not mean exactly what I thought it did in this context).

[Max Foerster - K15t]

Hi Katie,

it's a bit complicated, you're totally right. So let me help you a bit because I think you're mixing up a few things here. :) So you've got different levels of administration on cloud (and server as well but I won't talk about server):

1. Organization admins
2. Site admins
3. Product admins
4. Project administrators

Each of these roles has a specific scope/responsibility and access to different features:

1. Organization admins can access the organization and administer domains, subscribe to Atlassian Access, manage accounts of the organization.
2. Site admins can, for example, make other users site admins or product admins, manage groups and product access, can invite, remove and export users among other things.
3. Product admins can administer the product itself, e.g. create projects, create fields etc.
4. Project administrators can administer a specific project, e.g. adding users to project roles, create components.

So in your use case, you needed to add/invite users which means they will most likely count towards your billing (I assume they haven't been active users already!). That is nothing a project admin can oversee especially as lots of other permissions topics need to be considered here (what do they get access to by simply having application access). A Jira administrator / product administrator should be able to judge to best set up access etc. but is maybe not the right person to be responsible for costs as well. I hope I could explain the different levels of administration in Jira for you so you can set it up as you like. :)

Best, Max

[Katie Hill]

Hi Max, 

Thanks for the thorough explanation! So is it correct then for me to make my 2 colleagues site admins so that they can add/ remove users to our JIRA setup? Both collegues work on all projects, so nothing needs to be hidden from them, and they are both involved with billing etc. (one of them is the Managing Director!).

Many thanks,

Katie

[Max Foerster - K15t]

Hi Katie,

you're welcome. And your assumption sounds right. :)

Best, Max

[Katie Hill]

I've worked it out - they need to be made 'Site administrators' for the entire JIRA seup, not on the project. I would suggest renaming project 'Administrators' to something like 'Project Manager' so it is less misleading.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

That's not quite right.  A site administrator is someone who can maintain your entire Cloud set of systems.  A project administrator is someone who can administrate your project, but they are often not a project manager, so the title is wrong.  Your project admins do not need to be site admins to maintain users either, if you are using project roles as intended!