I need to hide the portal but the customers could still accesos to the project.

[Sofia Grunspan]

As Jira admin I've been asked to hide the portal in the Help Desk of the environment. That Is in that way because the portal wasn't being used, so I took out the browse permission to "Service Project Customer - Portal Access", until that point, customers could access and see the issues in Jira, not from portal. 

Since I've made that change customers cannot access to the project, see the issues in queues, open tickets by mail or being added as request participants. Some of these customers had a role in the project as "users" and others as customers. 

How can I allow them do all those things without giving licenses and make the portal visible in the help desk? How could I affect the creation of tickets from emails taking "Service Project Customer - Portal Access" out of browse project permission and how can I solve that?

I hope you can help. 

[Brant Schroeder · Accepted solution]

@Sofia Grunspan Welcome to the Atlassian community

JSM was created to provide a self service portal where the unlicensed customer could interact with the support agent on support issues.  It also allows them to share their issues with other customers (request participant).  Licensed JSM agents can access issues in the project as well as licensed Jira users. 

If you turn off the portal or portal access then all self service features would be removed and depending on how you do it communications might also be impacted.  You are using the tool in a manner that goes against it's core functionality.  You would have to license everyone to provide them project access but this will also give them additional access that they would not have in the portal.  

Can I ask why you do not wanting to have the portal available to your customers?  

If you do not want them submitting issue via the portal then you can just not have any request types on the at project.  They could then still use the portal to manage their issues but would only be able to submit requests via email.

[Sofia Grunspan]

The team that is working in that project does not use the portal, they submit tickets by email and then due the role they have in the project they can see them, and be added as request participants. But now they cannot create the tickets sending emails, they cannot be added as request participants either. So my question is if there is a way they can do that without making the portal visible. 

If I create a group with customers and put that group in the browse project permission, is it the same if I put "Service Project Customer - Portal Access" in the browse project permission again? 

[Brant Schroeder]

@Sofia Grunspan Service Project Customer - Portal Access controls customer access (unlicensed users)  if you create a group they will need to be licensed.  If the customer is not using the portal what does it matter that they have access to it?

[Sofia Grunspan]

Good question and I don't have the answer. I gave licenses to the users but they are still unable to create tickets from email, that is related to that permission taken?

In what does affect to take out the browse permission to Service Project Customer - Portal Access ?

[Brant Schroeder]

The inability to create issues via email is more likely associated with how your project is configured.  https://support.atlassian.com/jira-service-management-cloud/docs/change-project-customer-permissions/