How to automate revoke users in jira instance sandbox

[Priyadarshini R]

Hello everyone,

I am a Jira administrator. I have been given User admin access only. I want to automate the revoking of Jira licenses for those users who have not logged in for more than 90 days. I want to test only in Jira standbox instance. Please share your suggestions. 

Thanks,

Priya R

[Arkadiusz Wroblewski]

Hello @Priyadarshini R 

For this use case you have some official KB Article:

Bulk Disable or Remove Inactive Users in Jira Cloud | Jira and Jira Service Management | Atlassian Support

Best,

Arek🤠

[Germán Morales _ Hiera]

@Priyadarshini R  Two things matter more here than the automation script itself.

Native "disable after 90 days of inactivity" doesn't exist in the Jira UI at all, for any permission level. Atlassian's own guidance runs through admin.atlassian.com's bulk disable, or the user lifecycle REST API, and that API explicitly requires Org Admin access to Atlassian Administration, not a Product Admin. Since you said you only have User admin access, you likely can't call it yourself yet, you'd need an Org Admin to run it or grant you that role. There's an open request for native bulk deactivation, JRACLOUD-30708, worth voting on while you wait.

Second, check before you trust "test in sandbox first" for this specific case. Whether that's actually safe depends on which user management model your organization runs. Under centralized user management, users, groups and teams live at the organization level and are the same objects in your sandbox and in production, nothing gets copied. Under the older per-site model, sandboxes get their own copied user set that's isolated from production. Confirm which one applies before running any disable script against the sandbox, otherwise you could end up acting on real accounts while thinking you're in a safe copy.

If you want something you can run today without org access, removing the inactive users from your product's default group under Settings, User Management, Groups still frees the license. It's manual rather than scheduled, but it doesn't need the org API.

[Nayan_miniOrange]

Hi  @Priyadarshini R  ,

If you're looking for an automated solution, you may want to consider Automated User Management & Auto-deactivation for Jira by miniOrange.

The app is designed specifically for inactive-user management and license optimization across Jira, Confluence, JSM, and Bitbucket. For your use case — revoking Jira licenses for users inactive for 90+ days — it allows you to:

• Track user inactivity using product-specific last login (e.g. Jira activity, not just global org activity)
• Create a scheduled Remove Product Access rule for Jira with a configurable inactivity threshold (90 days in your case)
• Automatically remove users from Jira license groups when they exceed the inactivity period
• Include or exclude users who have never logged in.
• Send email notifications to users before access is removed.

For organizations looking to reduce license costs while maintaining governance and compliance, it provides a no-code alternative to building custom scripts with Atlassian APIs — and sandbox testing with Audit Mode makes it safe to validate before going live.

Happy to answer any questions about the use case or configuration.

Thanks,
Nayan Kakuste

[Priyadarshini R]

Hi,

I have a couple of questions:

1. How can I check whether our company is using centralized user management?

2. My goal is to free up Jira licenses in the Jira Sandbox. If I remove inactive users from the product access group in the sandbox, will they also lose access to the Jira production instance?

I look forward to your response.

Thanks,

Priya R

[Gor Greyan]

Hi @Priyadarshini R

Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

I think Jira Automation itself cannot revoke product access based on inactivity.

The approach can be to use Atlassian Admin APIs or an external scheduled script to find users who have been inactive for more than 90 days and then remove their Jira product access or the group that grants the license.