The different types of users: creators, contributors and stakeholders

[#1]

Hi everyone, 

As you know, Jira Product Discovery graduated from beta and is now generally available. For those of you who were part of the beta, you should already know everything that’s in this post. Here, I'll explain the different types of users in the product, what's working today, and what we're working on.

If you already know what Creators, Contributors, and Stakeholders are but can't figure out how to make them work, this post explains how to add them to a project. 

Jira Product Discovery editions

Jira Product Discovery is now generally available and has two editions:

• The Free plan has up to 3 free Creators and unlimited* Contributors and Stakeholders (I'll explain these roles in more depth below).

• The Standard plan has unlimited* creators, contributors, and stakeholders. Contributors are project members with a dedicated role and are free. Stakeholders are not project members, don't need a role, and are free. Creators are”.

• Note: there is a limit to the number of users you can add to Jira on a site. Whenever we mention “unlimited users” in the rest of this post, it should read “unlimited up until you reach the limit of 35k Jira users on the site”.

Watch this demo video to learn about creator and contributor roles (2min)

Creators

ℹ️ Creators need a Jira Product Discovery license. 

Creators can access all features of Jira Product Discovery. These folks are the ones who run the prioritization process, share roadmaps, it should read ideas, and so on.

• Typically, product managers, some designers, some researchers, and parts of the engineering team.

• They can do everything in Jira Product Discovery and are only limited by the permissions they're granted for each project.

                              A view seen from the Creator's perspective

Contributors

ℹ️ Contributors don't need a Jira license but must be added to the site's user base. If they already have a Jira license for any Jira product, they'll be Contributors by default; if they don't, you'll just need to add them to a specific user group.

Creators invite Contributors to collaborate in Jira. Contributors are people who get a full view of how the roadmap gets prioritized and why:

• Typically, the extended product team: all engineers, all designers, all researchers, all product managers

• They can see all the views in the project in Jira but can only perform contributor actions (comment, vote, add insights, add reactions) and submit ideas if the Creators allow it.

                               A view seen from a Contributor's perspective

If the feature is turned on for them, Contributors can create ideas in a Jira Product Discovery project via a configurable form but not edit them. More details in this post.

Stakeholders

ℹ️ Stakeholders don't need any Jira license, are not project members, and just need a free Atlassian account

Creators can share individual views, like their roadmap, with their stakeholders. 

• Typically, these are people from leadership, sales, support, customer success, some customers, and partners. They are basically people who are not typically in Jira or the project and wouldn't know how to use it.

• They can’t open the project in Jira, they can't see any other view than the one published to them. This is for when you want to share a single view only, for example, your roadmap. Creators publish a view to a stakeholder, allowing them to see this view only, and won't be able to navigate/browse around your project.

                           A published view seen from a stakeholder's perspective

Adding users to a project + Product roles vs Project roles

This post provides detailed instructions on how to add Creators and Contributors to a Jira Product Discovery project and explains the concept of project roles. 

[Andy John]

Hey Tanguy, 

Was just wondering if you might have a rough idea of when the "Stakeholder" user will become available? Really keen on delving deeply into this product but it only really becomes useful once I can share certain views with our different clients. I don't want to make seperate projects for each client as it will become a nightmare to manage. Hoping is it relatively soon so I can get them onto it. We introduced them to the jira service management space a few months ago and they absolutely love it. Makes their lives much easier as opposed to the normal email method of sharing information that is product related. 

Thanks,

Andy.

[Kelly Arrey]

Hi @Tanguy Crusson, To be clear, what permission level do you need to create a project? Is that Creator, or do you need to be an admin? (If so, what kind of admin?)
Thanks!

[Tanguy Crusson]

@Kelly Arrey you need to have Jira Product Discovery product access (aka a license). After that it depends on if your site administrator allows users to create team-managed projects or not. If so, then it's all you need. If not, then you'll need to ask an admin to create the project. 

[Kelly Arrey]

Hi @Tanguy Crusson I'm site admin, and we have a free license, so I can create them no problem. I was trying to figure out what perms I need to give my product managers so they can create a project. The descriptions I've seen say "Creators can do everything" but that doesn't seem to be quite accurate. Anyway, if they need permission to create team-managed projects, I'll go research that. Thanks!!!

[Tanguy Crusson]

@Kelly Arrey I just tried with a user who just has product access, and it worked fine - could create a project. That's based on default settings when you create a new site. If you see that a user has product access but can't create a Product Discovery project, then yes I would look at permissions to create Jira projects in this site

[Kelly Arrey]

@Tanguy Crusson Thanks!

[Eliran Itah]

hi @Tanguy Crusson , any estimation when we will see 'stakeholder' role in JPD beta? 

[Erki Tammik]

@Tanguy Crusson 

Would it be good to provide functionality where Contributors can edit their own ideas?
We want contributors to have the option to change only the fields that were originally present on the form. In some cases, it may lead to confusion if a ticket has been prioritized and the idea is modified thereafter.

The current situation may compel us to purchase paid licenses for everyone (which is good for Atlassian), but there is currently no way to restrict users from editing other people's ideas. If ideas are not frequently modified, it could be a waste of licenses.

Are there any other ideas on how to work around this issue?

[Rohan Swami]

@Erki Tammik for now the ideas aren't editable, we'll continue to improve this feature over time.

[Ben Gallant]

Will we allow a Stakeholder to add a new idea using a form?

Maybe allow us to build the form like we can with JSM? 

Currently, we're using JSM to collect new ideas and then use convoluted automations to move new ideas to JPD.

Let me know :)

[Tanguy Crusson]

@Ben Gallant the feature that works for contributors will also work for stakeholders (so they can create an idea, with the fields/template you selected)

[David Nadri]

@Tanguy Crusson - one of the screenshots in the article mentions Stakeholders need an Atlassian account.

Since Stakeholders could be some customers and partners who are not typically in Jira and wouldn’t know how to use it (as mentioned), can the JPD team please consider giving Creators the ability to share a minimal, public view-only link to the Roadmap view, similar to the ability to share public links in Confluence? (screenshot below)

For internal stakeholders, it makes sense to require an Atlassian account, but it would great if we can just share a link to some external customers who just want to have a glance at the live roadmap (not a static image of it, which I know is possible today), without needing to create an Atlassian account. 

[Tanguy Crusson]

Hi @David Nadri , long story short: this is not actually feasible in the Jira platform today. 

However, having an Atlassian account does not equate being a user of Jira or any other Atlassian products. 

It's free, you can create one by going to id.atlassian.com, you don't need to use any Atlassian product at all.

It's a bit like the "log in with Google/Slack/etc." that you see in most web apps today.

[Nick Purvis]

Hi there - I'm wondering if the Stakeholder role will support use cases as follows:

• We can give a customer access to submit ideas, and to view THEIR OWN submitted ideas.  But not to be able to see all the view and lists we've created - they should only be able to see only the list we grant them access to. 
  
  
• We can give a customer access to view ALL ideas, to comment, vote on those ideas, but when they open the idea, they should not be able to see certain fields within the idea - e.g. we don't want the customer to see Linked Issues, or the names of other customers (which currently is a multi-select field in our board).
  
  

Oh, and of course - any ideas on when Stakeholders will be available...?

Thanks,

Nick

[Brandon Check]

Hi @Tanguy Crusson do you think Stakeholders will be release by the end of 2023? We are very interested.

Thanks!

[Alina Bezkrovna]

Will stakeholders have the option to submit ideas like contributors can today?

[Julia Crawford]

@Tanguy Crusson I haven't seen any response on when the stakeholder role will be available is there an update on it?  Can you give a general timeframe and/or are you accepting any other early adopters?  We're rolling out a new process here and this piece is pretty impactful for us.

[Gavin Steele]

Hi there, new to JDB.

Has there been an update on the Stakeholder view?

I configured my teams prioritization workflow and would love to:

1. Share a specific view with each individual internal department (they can see what we are working on that relates to their department.

2. Share a roadmap view with the whole company

3. I would to be able share a Section view with departments.

For 3 - I create a section for the department to view specific lists/boards, in that section I also include the impact/effort view, so they can see that and understanding thinking.. I also include a delivery view so they can track the progress on just the work relating to their department.

So sharing a single view is good, but sharing a section (and all its children) would be great.

Also the ability to restrict access to section/view for contributors and creators.

Some other wants :)

I would also love to see the inclusion of an external public facing form. We use an alternative product to create an intake form and embed it on our sharepoint site for ideas and feedback.. we then have to process that outside of Jira and then into Jira.

Having to have a Jira (free) account adds friction to a large company where a lot of employees never need Jira access.

[Ree Agarwal]

Hi @Tanguy Crusson 

I have added an external party as contributor to our JPD project. The user does not have any JIRA product licence but only access to our site. I added the user to the contributor group as well. Now the question that I have is that when I added the user to our site userbase, the user got the notification to access it but when I added the user to the JPD project, the user did not get any notification. Also, when the user accessed the invite, they were forwarded to the atlas home menu without any projects mentioned there for access but just the atlassian products.

So how does the contributor access the JPD project to view the ideas and then vote or add insights onto it?

[Covadonga Carrasco]

Hi @Tanguy Crusson !

Could you please clarify the status of the stakeholder user development?
It has been six months since this article was written and some of us have assumed that this development (critical for us specifically) would be finished in the short term.

Can you tell us more, please?

Thank you very much!

[Damon]

Hey @Tanguy Crusson 

We have created a "Team Priority" field and would love for teams to be able to update it. We have over 200 people in our business. Does that mean each have to be a creator on a paid license for JPD?

Cheers. Loving JPD BTW. 

[Violeta Tamašauskienė]

It would be really good to have a stakeholder option launch date announced, as we are currently deciding on the tool to use in the Product Management team and Jira Product Discovery lacks only the stakeholder visibility option to be approved as a go-to option. Knowing it will happen at some point this year will make the decision much easier. 

[Tanguy Crusson]

Hi @Violeta Tamašauskienė , we've just turned the feature on for you - you'll see it if you refresh your screen, it's a button called "Publish" that you can see top-right of any view. 

We're wrapping up the early access program and feature is going to be available for everyone this quarter.

[Damon]

@Tanguy Crusson could we get the same Stakeholder functionality that you've turned on for @Violeta Tamašauskienė ?

[Violeta Tamašauskienė]

Thank you @Damon  this is amazing! Just in time for our next weeks meeting.