Update Atlassian ID for Jira Cloud and Data Center users when integrating with Jira Align

[#1]

Article Update (2/2/22)

For Cloud users, the information presented in this article is no longer an issue as of the 10.90 release and duplicate users should no longer be created. With the 10.104.0 release, any duplicate users that existed should be consolidated.

For Jira Data Center users, the Jira application setting for User email visibility must be set to PUBLIC.

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When users are brought into Jira Align with their Jira Issues, their email addresses also come from Jira.  Jira Cloud users need to take action to allow Jira Cloud to share their e-mail address with Jira Align.

Jira Cloud users who are assigned issues that will be coming over to Jira Align should update their Atlassian ID and make their e-mail address visible to "Anyone".  This will avoid login difficulties and cleanup later.

You can access your profile by going to id.atlassian.com to make your email address visible:

Users that don't take this action will find they have difficulty logging in to Jira Align.  Jira Align Admins will see them represented twice on the People screen.  Admins can address the login issue after it occurs:

1. Add an "X" to the valid Email of the manually created account

2. Update the the account that the connector created with the correct Email, Role, System Role, Enterprise Hierarchy and City and then reset the password

3. Deactivate the manually created account

[Rich Sparks]

This is very important for the teams using Jira Cloud.  Thanks for writing this out!

[Rae Gibbs]

According to Tim, the rectifying of this issue is a little more complex than deactivating the user that came through in Jira.  Apparently, that is the user that we want to keep.  You add an "X" or a few to the beginning of the email address to the user that was created in JA before deactivating that user.  Then you update the user that was created via Jira with the correct email address, role, system role, enterprise hierarchy and city and then reset the password.  I believe you have to keep the user that was created via Jira because of integration purposes.

[Tim Keyes]

Hi @Rae Gibbs ,

That is correct.  Jira Align will link the Jira account and the Jira Align account created on the back end.  I would suggest deactivating the original account as the connector will associate the Jira Account to the newly created user.

Another technique would be only manually creating admins in Jira Align who have already updated their Profile in Jira.  All additional users can then be synced via the connector and their email addresses can be set once they come.  This method would avoid duplicates.

Cheers!

[Don Miller]

Thanks for the clarification, @Rae Gibbs and @Tim Keyes !

[Don Miller]

Article has been updated with the correct steps to take when this situation occurs.  If it's not possible to get users to update their Atlassian profile, then Tim's suggestion to create minimal accounts is a great one.

[Allan Maxwell]

I'm guessing that every Jira user who will be integrated into Jira Align will need to do this themselves?  It is not something that a Jira Admin can set globally?

[Rae Gibbs]

@Allan Maxwell Unfortunately not.

[Ron Cavallo]

Thanks. I am seeing this issue in cloud, and it's effecting current cloud Jira to Jira Align integrations. The symptom is that you cannot trigger an Assignee change maybe cause its a user-picker dropdown. Asking the entire company to go in and change will be painful if there is not another option that has come up since Nov 2020?

Update 6/23 : With regard to the integration, its important to not forget the actual integration user service account. Without the visibility of that user changed to "Anyone", I've seen that work item creation from the Jira Align side sent to Jira fails, do don't forget your service account too!

[Hina Tufail]

Hi everyone !

First of all, thank you for this excellent and helpful community article.

Few questions :

• Does that sync only happen once (the first time) ? Like if the user hasn't its email visible and makes it visible, will it update ?
• What are the consequences if the accountID is not visible in the column externalID ?

Thanks 

[Rae Gibbs]

Hey @Hina Tufail ! Yes, it only happens once when the user is initially integrated. Once they make it visible after they are integrated, the Jira Align Admin will need to perform the corrective steps outlined in this article. The External ID field is used for SSO. If SSO is enabled, whatever is in that field should be the SSO login. Hope that helps!

[Hina Tufail]

Thanks for the info @Rae Gibbs !

[Mary Molina]

Hi @Don Miller After making the change as you advice, some of the users in the JIRA software instance I am in charge of lost access. Any ideas why? 

Thanks in advance,

Best, 

Mary