Can't invite/add new users even though I'm the Project Admin

[Harley Gomez]

I'm getting the below notification whenever I try to invite a new teammate to my project. For context, this is a personal project/hobby that me and my friend decided to use JIRA for in order to stay organized. My friend originally created the JIRA project and invited me to join. However, I am very much the lead on this project while he is just a teammate. I show that I am a project administrator so I'm not sure why I'm having trouble.

It's extremely frustrating not having control over my own project, and to make things worse, my friend has gone MIA and tends to do so for weeks/months at a time. Hence, why I'm getting a new teammate. Ultimately, I need to be at the highest level of control for this and I don't want to start from scratch because I already have dozens of tickets created for the project. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Walter Buggenhout]

Hi @Harley Gomez and welcome to the Community!

It seems that you do have project access, but not User Management (or Jira / Site admin) permissions. If you do, you should see the option to access User Management when you click on the cog icon next to your user avatar:

Without that permission, I am afraid you won't be able to add users nor approve the request to add these users.

The reason behind this, is that adding new people to your project also requires them to get a license on your Jira instance. As that may involve additional costs, it is restricted to central folks who can oversee the impact on the bill as well.

Hope this helps!

[Harley Gomez]

Thanks for the info, but yeah this is a free account/project. We're not a company or anything, I'm just a guy who has a passion for creating levels/experiences in the game Halo and wanted to track the progress in Jira. 

Looks like he's the root admin when it should in fact be me. Sucks because I have no guarantee when he will next respond to my messages.

[Harley Gomez]

@Joseph Chung Yin @Walter Buggenhout @Sarp Egemen 

Sorry for the tag, but I wanted to ask... it sounds like I can get everything I need for my purposes out of a simple Trello board.

Could I just create a fresh board there and if I have to, copy/paste everything as new tickets on it? It would be tedious, but worth it if I can get my new teammate up and running today.

My friend doesn't have admin access to my account I would assume correct? So making a new project on my own under Trello should solve this problem?

[Sarp Egemen]

Hi @Harley Gomez ,

Since your friend originally created the first project, and likely the organization too, he is the organization admin. Only he can add new users to the organization and grant them product access to Jira.

If you want full control over everything, the ideal scenario would be for your friend to grant you organization admin privileges.

[Harley Gomez]

Great, haven't heard from him in a while...

[Sarp Egemen]

That's unfortunate @Harley Gomez 

Well, you can reach out to Atlassian, but I’m not sure to what extent they can assist you, as this might be considered a violation of the original security terms.

However, there is a way—though it’s a bit tedious. You would need to create a new instance from scratch, but you can export all the old tickets and then import them into your new instance. This could be an alternative solution while preserving your data.

Or, of course, the third option is to wait for your friend to help you 🥲.

[Joseph Chung Yin]

@Harley Gomez 

Welcome to the community.  A few things that you need to be aware of -

1) Based on your subscription plan "Free", you are only allow three agent licenses for your entire site.

2) You need to work with your site admins to determine the configuration setup on licensed users for your new site.  

3) A project admin only have limited rights against the project itself - especially if the project is "Company Managed projects".  License users control is managed by the site admins.

Hope this helps.

Best, Joseph Chung Yin

[Harley Gomez]

Hi Joseph, thanks for the prompt response!

Yes this would only be the 3rd individual on the project. What do I do if the "site admin" is MIA for weeks at a time? I should be the site admin, not him. I don't think he intended to be the site admin.

If there are no solutions to getting me the access, is there a way start fresh while moving over all of my tickets (I don't want to manually re-create everything)?