Converting a licensed Jira user to a guest user

Question

The new guest role has appeared in my instance and I'd like to change several licensed users to to the guest role. What's the best way to do this with minimal to no disruption?

What's the experience like for users being converted to the guest role?

From what I've been able to dig up in the support KB, I only see instructions on how to convert a guest to a licensed user.

Another item:

From what I can tell, guests will need to be added directly to a space with the guest role. Can we attach the guest role to a group and have guests assigned to the space in that manner?

For context, I have a pseudo guest role used for external users. I have one space that relies on work item security scoped to groups. I'm hoping that guest users can at least still be associated with groups so the work item security can be applied appropriately.

EDIT: Since there are already two mentions of this...

The licensed users that I intend to convert to guests do not belong to my organization. I am well aware of the role's intended use and its compliance.

Michael Yang - Shinetech Software · Answer

If Guest’s one-space / no-groups limits are getting in the way — or you’re on Free/Standard, where Guest isn’t available (it’s Premium/Enterprise only) — another option is to leave those people off the Jira site and share selected work items into a partner portal (field-level visibility, no extra Jira seat). That’s what we built Collabound for: https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/376687883/collabound-for-jira-partner-collaboration?hosting=cloud&tab=overview

Also worth flagging: Guest can’t be used to convert internal licensed users. That’s against Atlassian’s acceptable use and can get the feature revoked. Collabound doesn’t have that restriction.

Christo Saayman · Answer

Converting existing users to Guest accounts (subject to the intended use and compliance) is needed. An existing request already exists for this and I Atlassian can be convinced of the need for this.

https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRACLOUD-98504

Trudy P Claspill · Answer

Hello @Hieu Phan

Welcome to the Atlassian community.

First, the users must not be members of domains owned by your Organization, as per https://support.atlassian.com/jira-cloud-administration/docs/invite-guests-to-jira/

You must not change your internal users from licensed users to Guests. That is a violation of the stated acceptable use of the feature and Atlassian can revoke your access to the feature if you misuse it.

Second, to make a licensed user a guest you would need to remove the allocation of the User role for the Jira application from that user. Then you can add the Guest role.

Third, you would have to add each Guest users individually to the one project that Guest is allowed to access, assigning them to the Guest role in that project per https://support.atlassian.com/jira-cloud-administration/docs/manage-guest-access-in-jira/

As to the experience,

* I don't know if the users would receive a new invitation to your site. I suspect that they might. 
* If they are assigned to Space Roles other than Guest, I expect they would not actually have access to those Spaces.
* The functionality available to Guests is different than what is available to a licensed user, so that would also impact their experience.

Lastly the Guest role cannot be associated with Groups.