Jira Space Restrict for External Users in a Group without setting all to Private

[Simon Gilmore]

I am an admin on Jira Cloud (Standard plan) using team-managed projects. The majority of work that is done is by our internal staff members who all use the same @domain.com email address.

We have a mix of Open, Limited and Private access spaces where most of them are Open or Limited so that new staff are able to easily see all existing projects and past projects for knowledge sharing and information reuse. These spaces have all been set up by current and past internal staff members.

We are inviting external clients onto a Jira space to collaborate on a project and I have invited them all, given them User access to Jira, added them to a dedicated Group, then added that Group to the space as a Member. They have all successfully signed up with their external work emails and can access the intended space as expected.

My issues is they are now able to view all of the projects/spaces that have their access as Open or Limited in our organisation. This is less than ideal.

Rovo AI and the Atlassian knowledge base have suggested I change all my projects to Private access which I would really prefer not to do. I understand that if I did this, I could then add all my internal staff to a new group and add that group to all the Private spaces. This is also less than ideal. The reason being, there are some spaces that actually need to be Private and administering the difference between actual private spaces and spaces that are set to Private just to keep externals out would be unsustainable. 

Is there a way to restrict a group of users to only be able to view and interact with a space that I choose and have no visibility of any other spaces which are not set at a Private access level?

[Trudy Claspill · Accepted solution]

Hello @Simon Gilmore 

No, there is no other option to hide Team Managed projects from user. The must be set to Private. If the are Limited or Open then all lic sed user will be able to see them and browse the issues. 

You can read more about that here:

https://support.atlassian.com/jira-software-cloud/docs/next-gen-permissions/

The only other option is to implement Issue Security in each project to hide issues.

I have a link on my other computer to information about that. I will add that shortly

[Simon Gilmore]

Thanks Trudy.
We ended up setting all Spaces to Private and will add internal staff to a new group and add that group to all projects that were previously Limited. This is obviously not sustainable as new projects start and people forget to or dont know to add the new group so staff miss out. Or someone gets it wrong and adds the group and someone sees a project they shouldn't.
Very frustrating that this functionality is not there. Surely it is common for organisations to have internal projects and invite externals to them for ad hoc or regular collaboration and want the rest of their organisation data protected.

[Trudy Claspill]

One of the other ways that people deal with this is to limit the ability to create projects and invite users  to a group of Jira Administrators who are fully educated in the security needs of the environment,. The Jira Administrators are  supported with well documented processes to follow for project creation and user onboarding.

[Simon Gilmore]

I’d like to suggest an alternative approach. Rather than creating a process where admins have to review and create projects as needs arise, which could become a bottleneck, it might be more effective to enable all users to create and manage their own projects, with admins providing oversight and guardrails.

Also, to clarify my earlier point: I’d like staff to have visibility into all non-private spaces so they can browse past work and learn. Making everything private just to exclude a few external users, and then manually managing access for each board, seems inefficient.

[Trudy Claspill]

Per your post tags you are a Product Admin for a Standard subscription. As such for a paid subscription you could open a support case directly with Atlassian technical support to provide your feedback and see if they can suggest if there is a native alternative.

Another alternative is to consider third party apps. There are a couple of apps that augment project creation capabilities. In them you may find functionality that meets your needs. Here is a search that lists a few for you to investigate.

https://marketplace.atlassian.com/search?query=delegated%20project%20creator%20for%20jira