On what conditions a user is counted towards the JIRA license?

Question

Hi,

I'm currently using JIRA Server v7.3.6 that is licensed for 50 users. I'm still not sure on what conditions a user counts towards the license. A few things I know from my hands-on:

* Only active user counts.
* User assigned to a group with "JIRA Application Access" counts.
* User with Admin/System Admin global permission doesn't count.

If those are true, then my JIRA license can hold 50 users with application access plus as many admins as I want.

I've searched through this forum and found this: https://community.atlassian.com/t5/JIRA-questions/JIRA-Administrators-counting-against-the-license-users/qaq-p/283515

However, the accepted answer is contradicting my observations. Also, I can't seem to find "JIRA Users" global permission (it seems that it's gone in the recent versions).

Thanks.

Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Answer

Sorry, yes, I'm assuming an admin is also a user.

They won't count towards the licence if they only have admin rights (and logging in is implied by having those rights).  But if you don't give them any application access at all, they don't count.

They won't be able to see or use anything they configure on a project level though, which makes the job pretty much impossible, so you'll always want to make them a user as well as an admin.

fithrantyo · Answer

Hi Nic, thanks for your response.

Let me explain my case: I have a user, let's say user-a. When I assign user-a to a group with application access, the licensed user count is added by 1. (I observe the users that count towards the license on Administration > Application > Versions & licenses)

However, when I assign user-a to a group that doesn't have application access but with Administrator global permission, the licensed user count doesn't increase.

Conclusively, user-a still can login and administer the application, but it doesn't count towards the license. I'm not sure what's wrong here.

Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Answer

The rules changed with JIRA 7, which changes the language of what you've been reading quite a bit.

However, the basic rule remains "if the user can log in, they count towards the licence".

In all versions, access is granted via groups.

Before JIRA 7, this was quite a simple one - there was a global permission for "can log in" called "JIRA Users".  Any member of the group(s) named in there counted.

With JIRA 7, we now have "application access", for Core, Software and Service Desk.  It's the same principle though - you grant application access to a group, and any member of the group counts towards the licence for that application.

Additionally:

Yes, if a user is disabled, they can't log in, and they don't count any more

Users are deduplicated - if you give the groups A and B JIRA Software access, and then put Alice in both groups, she still only counts once

You are wrong about admininstrators.  They count towards the licence.   But, the Atlassian administrator account on Cloud does not (Because it would be wrong to advertise a "10 user licence" and then have one account you can't actually use)