nav[aria-label="Primary Navigation"] { padding: 0; & ul { list-style: none; width: 100%; display: flex; flex-direction: row; justify-content: start; align-items: start; gap: 30px; padding: 0; & li { margin: 0; } & ul li { list-style: none; } } }

Creating JIRA issues using multiple service accounts for different spaces

Angelica Pauli

Hi,

We have a requirement to create JIRA issues from ServiceNow. We already have an existing sevice account in JIRA and the integration was already in place. However, it is for a different project from what we handles.

We are considering using a different service account to create JIRA issues and access our projects/spaces in JIRA. Do you recommended this approach? What could be the pros and cons of this in JIRA? Thank you.

Accepted answers

Trudy P Claspill

Hello @Angelica Pauli

Welcome to the Atlassian community.

I see that you posted a related question on this article:

https://community.atlassian.com/forums/Jira-Cloud-Admins-articles/A-Guide-to-Service-Accounts-in-Atlassian-Cloud-Part-2-Setting-up/ba-p/3185888

Here is my opinion.

Cons:

- The burden on your Org Admins to track and regenerate tokens for multiple service accounts

Pros:

- adhering to least-privilege mindset by having any given service account granted access to only one project. If you have one account with access to all projects, then anybody who has the token could get access to data they should not be able to access.

So, what is more important to your company - low maintenance or higher security?

Arkadiusz Wroblewski

Hello @Angelica Pauli

Yes for one additional integration, that sounds like a reasonable approach.

It gives you cleaner separation and keeps permissions tighter, especially if that account only needs access to your Jira projects. At the same time, one extra service account is usually still manageable, so this feels like a good middle ground.

The only real downside is a bit more admin work around permissions and token management.

Small suggestion? if you are setting up a new integration now, also check whether you can use OAuth 2.0 for the service account.

All comments

Trudy P Claspill

Hello @Angelica Pauli

Welcome to the Atlassian community.

I see that you posted a related question on this article:

https://community.atlassian.com/forums/Jira-Cloud-Admins-articles/A-Guide-to-Service-Accounts-in-Atlassian-Cloud-Part-2-Setting-up/ba-p/3185888

Here is my opinion.

Cons:

- The burden on your Org Admins to track and regenerate tokens for multiple service accounts

Pros:

So, what is more important to your company - low maintenance or higher security?

Angelica Pauli

Hi @Trudy P Claspill ,

Thank you for responding to my query.

If we are to add just 1 more service account, we can still have higher security without putting too much burden for Org admins, right?

Arkadiusz Wroblewski

Hello @Angelica Pauli

Yes for one additional integration, that sounds like a reasonable approach.

The only real downside is a bit more admin work around permissions and token management.

Small suggestion? if you are setting up a new integration now, also check whether you can use OAuth 2.0 for the service account.

Angelica Pauli

Thank you for your inputs @Arkadiusz Wroblewski !

Trudy P Claspill

Hello @Angelica Pauli

Going from 1 account to 2 seems reasonable. Going from 1 to 10 might even seem reasonable to your Org Admins. I suggest you talk with them about what they think a reasonable number is.

Dhiren Notani_Exalate_

Hi @Angelica Pauli ,

Yes, using a separate service account per integration/project is generally a good approach, especially in your case where different teams/projects are involved.

Pros:

Better access control – you can limit permissions only to the required projects
Clear audit trail – easier to track which integration created/updated issues
Isolation – changes or failures in one integration won’t impact others
Security – avoids over-permissioning a single global account

Cons:

More management overhead – multiple accounts, tokens, and credentials to maintain
Configuration duplication – similar setups may need to be repeated
Credential rotation effort – needs to be handled per account

In practice, most teams prefer separate service accounts for cleaner governance and troubleshooting.

Also, just to understand your setup better — how is the integration currently happening between ServiceNow and Jira? (custom API scripts, middleware, or a tool?)

If you’re managing mappings, permissions, and logic manually, applications like Exalate can simplify this quite a bit — especially when you need to control what data is synced per project without tightly coupling both systems.

Thanks, Dhiren

Welcome!

It looks like you're new here. Sign in or register to get started.

Quick Links

Find more posts tagged with

jira

cloud

jira-cloud