How to import users from AD before they log into Jira

[Branden Griffin]

Trying to import all our AD users into Jira so that they don't have to log into Jira for the account to be created because we need to assign some tickets to users but because they have never logged into Jira their account is not created.  Can we import the users from AD and have them create an account in Jira?

[Andy Heinzer · Accepted solution]

If I recall correctly, Jira has a built in mechanism to prevent you from assigning issues to users that have never logged into the system.  The reasoning behind this is that you really don't want to assign issues to someone that has never been able to login to that site.  Consider that any issue assigned to such a user would possibly and probably never be looked at in Jira.  Which is really bad from a project management standpoint.

So yes, you can connect Jira Server to an LDAP instance in order to import all your user to the system and use that LDAP instance to handle the authentication of those users.  Please see Connecting to an LDAP directory for more details.

But you still need to make sure that these users have application access first.  Otherwise they cannot login to Jira.    Only after the user has been able to login to Jira at least once, then you can assign that user issues, provided the project permissions scheme allows for it.

[Branden Griffin]

That is what I was afraid of.  We are switching to this and I have tickets from the old system that I have entered into Jira and normally our users just reply to the ticket and the comments get added that way they are not used to having to log into the system so I was hoping to avoid that part.

Thanks for you answer and your time, much appreciated.