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Is Your JSM License Being Consumed Very Fast in Jira Cloud?

Sekhar Reddy

Have you noticed that your Jira Service Management (JSM) licenses are being consumed faster than expected?

I recently noticed a change in Jira Cloud where adding an existing Jira Software user to a JSM project under the Service Desk role can automatically assign them a JSM license.

Previously, users could be given access to a JSM project for viewing purposes without consuming a JSM agent license. However, with the current behavior, adding them to the Service Desk role may result in them being added to the JSM license group.

Why is this a concern?

In many organizations, project administrators add Jira Software users to JSM projects simply so they can view tickets. These users don't necessarily need to work as JSM agents.

With the current behavior, those users may start consuming JSM licenses, which can increase license usage unexpectedly.

For example:

Jira Software User → Added to JSM Service Desk role → JSM License consumed

This could potentially result in organizations needing to purchase additional JSM licenses for users who only require read-only access.

What should administrators check?

If you notice your JSM license usage increasing unexpectedly, check whether Jira Software users have recently been added to JSM projects under the Service Desk role.

It would be helpful if Atlassian could clarify whether this is an intentional change and provide a recommended way to give Jira Software users read-only access to JSM projects without consuming a JSM license.

Has anyone else noticed this behavior in their Jira Cloud environment?

Comments

Jeanne Scilley

Yes, I noticed this and was shocked that its by design.

After a cost cutting exercise and cutting 100 agents, I noticed a quick uptick in ~20 agents in a short period of time. After some due diligence and a few hours of research, I discovered that it was the role change auto applying a license. I immediately reported it as a bug to atlassian only to be informed that its by design. In fact, there is an open "bug" for when a user is entered into the role that is does NOT grant them a license. Since then I have noticed that the behavior is inconsistent between different service desks in my org. I have had to create a forge app that alerts me anytime there is a change in agent count so that I can stick to budget.

Please see https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JSDCLOUD-17699. I shared my feelings that I believe they are wrong in opening up access controls for a license (billing) to a space admin. I invite others to do the same.

Brown_ Kelly

I too noticed this occurring in one of our sandboxes today. It's not yet occurring in our production instance. While I can understand the convenience of such a feature, we too have situations where we want to give developers "contributor" access without consuming a JSM license. Atlassian's own documentation says you can assign them a Service Desk Team role without the JSM license to give them this contributor level access. If this behavior is going to change, then it looks like setting up a role with separate permissions will work and avoids the JSM license from getting auto-added. We have a large org, so granting the JSM license automatically when someone's added to the space by a space admin isn't ideal since they often don't understand the licensing implications.

Jeanne Scilley

We have created a new role so we have 2 that we manage in a JSM project. One is Team and the other is Agent. In our permission scheme we leverage both and only the Agent role is assigned a JSM license. We rely heavily on the role of non licensed contributors which we use the role "Team" for.