Is it possible to give an external user the ability to manage ONLY SPECIFIC tickets in our JIRA?

Question

Hi team,

Looking for some advice. We are currently in the process of migrating one of our old JIRA instances into the Cloud version. We have an existing project for which we outsource part of the support. So issues in that project could be managed by an internal user, or an external one. As part of our migration we are consolidating several projects into one, so the existing solution of a completely separate project is no longer an option.

So, what I need to understand is what is possible here. Ideally we need:

A set of external users who can access and manage ONLY SPECIFIC tickets within an existing JIRA Project. They should categorically not be able to access or manage any other tickets for any other customers within that JIRA. I am aware that I can restrict which tickets a CUSTOMER can see, but is there a way to restrict which tickets a USER can see? Does anyone have any solutions for this?

Thanks,

Chris

Michael Yang - Shinetech Software · Answer

Hi @Chris Milton,

Collabound is a good fit when one Jira project has multiple external partners—especially for longer-term collaboration—and each partner should only work on their selected tickets, without seeing other customers’ work in the same project.

They stay off your Jira instance (no seat / no browse across the project). You share selected work items into a partner portal—portal access for partners is free. With share templates, you can set different templates per project or partner—defining which roles can share and which fields are included—so each partner only sees and manages what you choose.

Marketplace:

https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/376687883/collabound-for-jira-partner-collaboration?hosting=cloud&tab=overview

I’m on the Collabound team — happy to answer setup questions if that model fits your consolidation.

Sami Shaik · Answer

@Chris Milton , the issue security scheme everyone has pointed you at controls what the external user can see; your question is what they can manage, and that depends on something nobody has asked yet: what kind of external user this is. There are three, and the answer is different for each.

1. A JSM portal customer (free, no Jira licence). They can raise, view, comment on and, if you enable it, transition their own requests through the portal, and see requests shared with them or their organisation. They cannot edit fields, assign, or manage anything on the agent side. If "manage" means "follow and respond to their own tickets," this is the answer and it costs nothing.

2. A Jira guest (free, 5 per paid user, Standard plan and above, external domain only). @Arkadiusz Wroblewski  is right to raise this and it is the closest fit for "manage a subset." A guest is added to one space and gets the space's guest role, whose permissions you configure in the permission scheme like any other role: Browse, Edit, Assign, Transition, Comment, and so on (guest permissions in Jira). No global permissions, no space administration. The limitation is that the role's permissions apply to every work item the guest can see in that space, so "only specific tickets" is achieved by combining the guest role with issue security (which is where @John Funk  and @Jack Ruby  answers come in): the guest role gets Edit and Transition in the permission scheme, and an issue security level restricts which items they can see at all. Permission decides what they can do; security decides on which items.

3. A licensed user. If the external person needs to work across spaces, administer anything, or exceed what the guest role allows, they are a paid seat, and then it is the normal permission scheme plus issue security again.

The combination that answers your question literally: guest role in the space with Browse, Edit, Assign (if needed) and Transition, plus an issue security scheme with a level that includes that guest for the specific tickets. Set the level on those items (by hand, or by an automation rule on a label or component), and the guest can manage exactly those and nothing else. Two gotchas: guests cannot be internal-domain people, and you cannot downgrade an existing paid user to a guest to save a seat; Atlassian's doc is explicit on both.

Jack Ruby · Answer

You can achieve this with issue-level security in Jira. Create an Issue Security Scheme with separate security levels, then assign the appropriate external users or groups only to the specific issues they need to manage. This keeps the project consolidated while preventing them from accessing other customers’ tickets.