Create project permissions

[Sam Hall]

I've installed a Jira evaluation but haven't had time to read the manual. Can someone help me figuring out how to set up a global role with permissions to create and manage new projects?

I've created a role called Project Manager but I can't see how to assign privlidges to that role and the Global Permissions page freaks me out. I just need to get this done so I can get it out to the users to evaluate without having to grant them Administrator access.

Establishing Jira has been on my todo list for a long time, I've just been too busy to spend any time on it but this is the last hurdle.

[danielwester · Accepted solution]

We've created the Project Creator for JIRA that might fit your need: https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/com.wittified.jira.project-creator

You (or somebody with JIRA Administration access) will have to create a set of templates that your Project Managers(or anyone you give access to create) can choose to create new projects from.

[Domain Admin]

Thank you Daniel, this is exactly what we are after however we use the on-demand version so this is not compatible. Jira should buy this from you as this should form part of the core system.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

This plugin is an excellent way to fill the gap - your (full) Jira admins create the schemes, and will be aware of the "minor tweak in scheme can make a total mess of everything", but the project admins can't do that. They can create projects and choose from (hopefully) safe schemes for everything.

It avoids the utter mess I've had to clean up so... many... times...

[Sam Hall]

Nice work Daniel!

[SkyIsFalling]

If you want the ability to assign "create project" permission to someone *without* making them a full-on Jira administrator (which I think is a reasonable demand/use-case), go and vote for this missing functionality here:

https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRA-1431

[Domain Admin]

I need Project Managers to be able to "Create Projects" but I do not want to give them Administrator priviledges. Surely there is a way to do this ? Please help.

Giving Project managers the "Administrator" role would require a much higher level of training, review and backup as data can be erased, fields altered, etc.

Currently this situation is a big pain because we only have a couple of system admins and it is tedious to have to create projects on behelf of project managers ... the only alternative being to make numerous system administrators.

[Domain Admin]

Wow, that that is disappointing and thanks for your quick reply Sam. I have been trawling through the settings as I thought it was my lack of understanding rather than a system deficiency.

Hopefully they will address this.

[Sam Hall]

Yeah you can't do it or else the developement effort to get it working through webservice/plugin/hackery is pretty significant.

[Mariami]

Hello, I'm new here.  I face the same problem and I'm a bit confused about Jira permissions. I have created default permissions for project managers and developers, but I want to give project managers permission to create projects and don't want to give them full administration permissions to project managers. 

2. Is it possible that  project managers  and developers can see only their own projects( the ones they have created and are working on).

Thank you in advance :)

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

No.  You have to be a Jira or System admin to create projects.

Yes, you can limit people to their own projects.  You will have to modify the permissions and user memberships so that people are not automatically granted access, but have to be added to the project or group before they can see the projects.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Short answer, no, it won't work, you will make a mess.

It's not the project creation and maintenance I'd worry about - as I already said, having a set of users who can create projects and pick their configuration is not really an issue (only other thing I'd add is some form of reporting to allow system admins to look for unused or low-volume projects for a bit of housekeeping)

It's this bit:

maintain their own little world within the tool without interacting with someone elses world without permission

That's where it becomes a total mess. If you have administration rights, you can create fields. In any project you want via screens, issue contexts, field configurations. You can amend schemes, which are used by many projects, not necessarily just the ones you "own". This list goes on and on.

My advice when you're looking at the self-serve side is to create something that would let your people create projects and pick from the schemes, but retain the maintenance of all the schemes, fields, workflows etc in a small team who work closely togehter and understand the fact that a "minor tweak for Project A" could hit every user in the system

[Sam Hall]

Having now had a detailed look at the webservice API, I now see it's possible to build some software to allow users to set up their own custom Permissions Scheme and allow them to create projects under that scheme without the need to grant them any special privileges within Jira. Looks like Jira can meet our requirements by the time we go live if we can spare a weeks worth of development effort.

Happy clients because they can do their thing without asking permission all the time. Happy IT guys because we get to have fun developing some software instead of having to do a bad job of Jira administration.

[Lori_Davis]

Hi Sam Hall,

I know this was 7 years ago, but we are having this exact same issue - we don't want to give full admin rights but want our PM's to be able to create projects in the classic template.  Did you end up developing a solution to work with the webservice API?  I'm very interested if you did.  You may email me at ldavis@visionworks.com

Thanks,

Lori Davis

[Sam Hall]

Hi Lori,

The short answer is no, we just gave people Jira admin access. I emailed you the long answer :)

Cheers,

Sam

[Dieter]

You can't assign global permissions to a project role. You need to create a group and assign the global permission "JIRA Administrators" to that group as described at https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRA/Managing+Global+Permissions Then you add your evaluation admins to the group

[Sam Hall]

Thank you very much!

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Bear in mind that this will give them a lot of system level permissions as well as "create project" - in effect, you will be making them Administrators...

[Sam Hall]

Thanks Nic, if there's an alternative please post your answer. This is good enough for me for now. If Jira isn't flexible enough to support users that can simply create and manage their own projects at will then I'll check out the webservice API to work around this by the time we go live with it.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

It's not - see https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRA-3156

From experience, I'd also recommend that you think very carefully before you enable project administrators. Everywhere I've been that has allowed this has rapidly ended up in a dreadful mess, with hundreds of unneccessary and/or duplicated fields, projects, schemes and so-on.

Having "project admins" who can create projects and select the schemes a project uses is something I'd welcome, but the maintenance of the schemes should be up to a small team of Jira admins.

[Sam Hall]

I appreciate the advice, but I'm really hoping to deploy the live system with a similar self serve model we use with confluence where anyone can create a space and then it's their responsibility to administer it. This model works well for us with Confluence as we are in the education sector and have to be extremely flexible so much so that no single person or even team could possibly administer the entire site. We provide the service and a one page FAQ for new space administrators, after that they are on their own. Any "mess" is someone elses problem, that's all we are resourced to support. It's been like this for 3 years or so and it's been a raging success. Do you think this could work with Jira?

I've got various clients with very different requirements, some are actually asking for Jira by name. So far it seems the cheapest solution to satisfy the widest range of requirements. Some people are eyeing off Green Hopper for actual project management, some people need a bug tracker and some just want a task list. We're not in a position to tell people how they can and can't use the tool so we just want them to be able to create and maintain their own little world within the tool without interacting with someone elses world without permission. I'm hoping any shortfalls can be bridged with some creative leveraging of the API and a supporting system or two that can sit along side Jira to achieve this (we have created something similar for our Confluence instance to further empower space admins without compromising security).

[Dieter]

Ok, what you do is ok in an evaluation phase and i'd also suggest to limit the administrators once your Jira is in production. If it's only about creating projects you can create a self service project which might have some approval steps before a final "Create project" transition creates the project for the reporter in a post function. I guess there are plugins around that can create a project in a post function

[forlooper]

I did that but am having trouble seeing the group I created. The drop down says 20 of 52 groups to choose from, but only goes to the letter "E" before stopping, with no "next page" or anything of the such. any advice? And searching for it by letter does not bring it up either