What happens if you accidentally exceed licences on Cloud when using AD user provisioning with Guard

Question

We use user provisioning with Active Directory and atlassian guard to grant licences for a user group. We are on annual billing cycle.

Sometimes we have periods when we receive lots of requests in a short period of time and these may be handled by multiple agents at once, which could lead to someone adding a new user to the AD group when no licences are left. I know if we tried adding new users directly on Cloud it just wouldn’t let us, but what happens when this is done via provisioning? I.e. we have x number of licences, but x+1 people within the synced AD group. I can’t find a definitive answer for cloud. My main concern is continuation of service.

My understanding if you exceed licences:
On server - the system becomes inaccessible entirely

On DC - Jira enters read-only for all users

Do either of these happen with Cloud, or does something different happen?

Name name_eyc1pn · Answer

Thanks Kai.

I guess the question is what we potentially lose from ‘full functionality’ if this inadvertently happens (say, because we haven’t done a clean up of users for a few weeks).

Kai Krause_xx7uj7 · Answer

Hello and Welcome

If you attempt to add users via provisioning when no licenses are available, the behavior might not be explicitly documented, but generally, the system will not automatically add users without licenses.

Instead, you might need to manually manage or upgrade your license tier to accommodate additional users.

In contrast to Data Center, where Jira might enter a read-only mode for all users if licenses are exceeded, Atlassian Cloud does not have a similar read-only mode for exceeding licenses.

Instead, you would need to ensure that your user count does not exceed your licensed limit to maintain full functionality.

BR
Kai