What does developer role mean in jira service management? Is it the same as collaborator?

Question

I'm confused. In the official Atlassian documentation, it is said that there are four project roles: Admins, agents, collaborators, and customers. When I go to my project settings to the section 'People,' I can choose roles from 'Service Desk Team' (which I understand goes for agents), 'Service Desk Customer' (goes for customers), and 'Administrators' (for admins). There is also a role named 'Developer.'

* I don't really understand what the developer role is. Is it the same as a collaborator or something else?
* If agents and collaborators both belong to the 'Service Desk Team' role, what is the difference then? How can I make a person a collaborator? Because if I understand properly, if a user has the 'Service Desk Team' assigned, he automatically becomes an agent and becomes billable.

Could someone please explain to me what the developer, collaborator, and agent roles are because I'm confused?

Christian Sprenger · Answer

I need to hop-in to this answer and ask a question:
We're using DC not Cloud.

However, we have Developer but no "Collaborator". I reckon the Developer IS the Collaborator, is it not?

We have the discussion that the Developer cannot add attachments (internally) into a ticket and we have been told this is because of Agent licenses, but Collaborators can (according to the link of Users and Roles).

So again: what is the difference between Developers and Collaborators, mainly in regards of their permissions?

Dan Breyen · Answer

Hi @ilia.kakhanski welcome to the Community.  The Developer Role plays less of a part for JSM, but it's still of use.  JSM mainly focuses on Agents, Collaborators, and Customers.

If you're using both Jira Cloud for your Development projects and then Jira Service Management for your Customer Support, I could see where this could get a little confusing.

Agents are your Customer Support people who are directly responding to your Customers.  They may or may not have access to your Jira Cloud application.  (mine do). The licensing of JSM controls the number of Agents you have. These individuals might also be setup as Developers from a Jira Cloud perspective and use that application as well. (That's the situation with my setup.)

Collaborators are your 2nd Level of Support. They mainly assist your Agents.  They have access to JSM to view and comment on Customer Tickets, but they are not able to respond back and forth with customers.  Collaborators do not count against your JSM licensing.  They would count against your Jira Cloud License.

The Developer Roles we use for those individuals that do not have access to JSM, nor are they that 2nd Tier of support.  They mainly are only using Jira Cloud from a Developer Perspective.  Developer Roles count against your Jira Licenses.

As the Jira Cloud and JSM Cloud Software are shared in the same instance, there is some overlap between the two systems.

This article explains the roles for JSM: JSM Users and Roles

Hope that helps.