Need Clarifications on Atlassian Org Management (Roles, Billing, Guests)

Amina CHAYEB

Hi community,

I am currently following the Administrer Atlassian Organisations learning path.

In the course Explore and create an Atlassian organization, it is mentioned that Jira Administration is a special app automatically added in the background to any site that includes one or more Jira apps.

My first question is about managing an organization without any Jira app.
For example: an organization with one site and only one app, such as Confluence Cloud.

The course also states that “The user access admin role is only available if you have centralized user management.”
What does this mean exactly? Is it possible to have an organization with multiple sites and manage users separately on each site?

Another point: the course mentions that user access admins are not billable, but it does not specify anything about site admins. As far as I know, they are not billable either—could you confirm?

Regarding the Confluence guest role:
It is stated that guests are free of charge up to five guests per paid user.
Does this mean that if I have 10 paid users, I can have up to 50 free guests?

Finally, can a user access admin grant access to a group that does not have access to any app (for example, a business group created for organizational purposes only)?

Thank you in advance for your help!

Trudy P Claspill

Hello @Amina CHAYEB 

1. Managing the Organization is separate from the special Jira Administration App. The Jira Administration App is used within a Site under an Organization to manage who has Administration access overall for just the Jira App. There are functions for managing the Organization, and functions for managing access to the Sites and Apps in the Organization.

2. Centralized User Management

This the default method of managing user for an Organization. There was a slightly different method available a couple of years ago that some long term customers may still have. You can find an overview of Centralized User Management here: https://www.atlassian.com/trust/centralized-administration  It refers to a centralized hub for managed users in your Organization and managing their app access to the Site and Apps under your Organization. Specific permissions within the Apps are then managed within the Apps themselves.

3. Site Admins

Site Admins are billable if they also have app access.

Site Admins are added to the built in site-admins group. The site-admins group has administrator access to the Confluence App. Administrators of the Confluence app automatically have user access to the Confluence App, so Site Admins are billable for Confluence.

For Jira, App Admin access is granted through the App Admin role in the Jira Administration App. This is a bundled separate app from the Jira App. Because App Admin has been split out in this way, Jira supports granting Site Admins access to administer Jira without also automatically granting them User Access to Jira. So for Jira it is possible to have a Site Admin that does not have Jira User Access, and in that scenario the Site Admin would not be a billable user for Jira.

4. Confluence Guest Users

Yes, exactly. If you have 10 paid user licenses then you get 50 guests 10 * 5 = 50

5. User Access Admin modifying groups that don't have app access

No. According to the documentation a User Access Admin can modify groups only that have access to the apps for which the user has been granted the User Admin Access role.

https://support.atlassian.com/user-management/docs/what-are-the-different-types-of-admin-roles/