Allow agile features to limited nb of users from jira Core

Question

I'm administering a jira core v6.3.4 system with currently about 130 users. Our current user groups are splitted into jira-administrators and jira-users.

We recently go a request to enable agile features for a limited nb of users. I requested an evaluation license for jira software and it's all working fine. However, right now with this evaluation license, everyone has access to the agile features and there's no difference in the user groups definition, so I guess there will be something to modify in terms of user groups there in order to restrict access to agile features to specific users.

I read from here (https://confluence.atlassian.com/adminjiraserver070/licensing-and-application-access-749382677.html) that I might need to define a new group "jira-software-user", however, before doing anything like this, I have questions:

1) How is that linked to the agile features and licenses? By naming convention? I read somewhere that I can see & define all that from the "Admin -> Manage applications" menu, but honestly, I can't find that menu anywhere (maybe that's because of jira v6.3.4 ...).

2) If I create a "jira-software-user" user group, do I need to also create a "jira-core-user" group and transfer all the users who do not need agile features from my existing "jira-user" group to the new one?

Frankly, the available documentation is pretty confusing on that topic, especially since we're running an "old" jira version and since jira switched to this Core/Software approach ...

Any help would be appreciated!

Pierrick_Lebigre · Answer

Thanks Nic for your answer, it's much clearer now, and I guess that's not such a good news for me, as we have a pretty heavy jira evolution project workflow, so migrating will not be an easy option here.

I certainly need to contact atlassian sales now for an estimation of the license costs for the agile add-on for all my current users, but I'm afraid the cost will be far too high just to provide access to a limited nb of users ...

Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Answer

Oh, and I forgot - add-ons for JIRA 7 need to be licenced at the highest tier of the three applications - if you've got 10 Software users, 3 Agents and 25 Core users, you can have up to 38 active users (if no Agents need Software and vice-versa), but you only need to licence add-ons for 25.

Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Answer

Ok, you need to take a step back and look at the history.

There are no products "JIRA Core" or "JIRA Software" for JIRA 6.  JIRA 6 is a single product to which you add add-ons such as "Agile".

JIRA 7 Core is a platform to which we add applications (as well as add-ons).  The two applications available at the moment are JIRA Software and JIRA Service Desk.  These are direct replacements for the old add-ons "Agile" and "Service Desk"

All versions of JIRA licence and implement add-ons globally.  This means you need to licence an add-on for the same number of users as JIRA is licenced for and the add-on becomes available for all users.  So, when you add Agile to JIRA 6, it's for everyone.

JIRA 7's applications are licenced independently.  This means you can have a load of users using the standard product, but then add (say) 10 Software users who then get all the Agile/Software features on top of the Core as well.

So, in short, you can't do this "limited access" on JIRA 6, but you can on JIRA 7.

When you upgrade, you will find JIRA Software makes the new groups for you and moves people into them - you'll probably want to re-arrange that as part of the upgrade, to get the right people in place.