Is there a “Switch User” / impersonation feature in Jira Cloud similar to Jira Data Center?

Question

In Jira Data Center, Jira administrators can use the Switch User functionality to temporarily log in as another user. This is very useful for troubleshooting permissions, checking what a specific user can see, reproducing access issues, and validating Jira configurations from the user's perspective.

Is there any similar functionality available in Jira Cloud?

If Jira Cloud does not provide a native “Switch User” or impersonation feature, are there any recommended alternatives, Marketplace apps, or admin approaches that allow us to troubleshoot Jira as a specific user without asking for their credentials?

The main use case is to verify exactly what a user can see and access, including projects, issues, fields, screens, and permissions.

Joseph Chung Yin · Answer

@David Shahbazyan

I agreed with @Tomislav Tobijas stated in his response.  Another thing you can check is for third party add-ons to give you the needed function just for Jira application in the Cloud.  I know that Scriptrunner for Jira Cloud version doesn't support due to Jira Cloud's restricted REST APIs limitation while the same app for Jira DC does the job.

Your option will be

Manually log in as another user for troubleshooting or checking permissions in your cloud site access the Administration portal (admin.atlassian.com) and then navigate to your user directory, select the specific user, choose the target application, and click Log in as User option.

Best, Joseph

Numeric Oasis · Answer

Worth adding the constraints on top of what Tomislav and Markus covered, because several of them bite precisely on the permission troubleshooting you describe as the use case.

The documented limits are that you cannot log in as another organisation admin under centralised user management, nor as anyone holding the same role as you or higher under original user management. You also cannot log in as someone who has not yet accessed the app, and you cannot log in as a Jira Service Management portal only customer account. The last one surprises people, since a portal access problem is exactly the kind of thing you would want to reproduce this way.

The user is emailed each time you do it. That is stated in the documentation rather than being a side effect, so it is better to tell the person in advance than to have them ask afterwards why they got the notice.

The caveat most relevant to your goal is that impersonation does not reproduce workflow based restrictions faithfully. JRACLOUD-98903 records that during a "Log in as user" session, workflow step properties such as jira.permission.edit.group and jira.permission.comment.denied can fall through, because licence and session checks are evaluated against the admin identity while permission checks are evaluated against the impersonated user. So if what you are validating is a workflow property restriction, an impersonated session can give you a false result. For that particular class of check, a real test account placed in the same groups remains the more trustworthy method.

Markus · Answer

Hi @David Shahbazyan,

Yes, the same functionality is available in Jira Cloud. But you need to be Org or Site Admin to be able to do this.

You go to your User Directory  (https://admin.atlassian.com) then you select the User you want log in as. Then select the App in want to check, click on More Options and select 'Log in as User'

Best Regards,

Markus