How can I provide non-licensed users Read-Only access to a Jira project?

[Jamie Malangyaon]

Is there a way to give non-licensed users Read-Only access to Jira projects?

For example - I have users in a group with no access to our Jira product, is there a way to give this group view-only permissions for a Jira project?

[Carlos Garcia Navarro · Accepted solution]

Hi @Jamie Malangyaon ,

This other post may be helpful: https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Jira-questions/Read-only-access-to-Jira-Projects-Issues-without-a-licensed-user/qaq-p/1875810

[Trudy Claspill · Accepted solution]

Hello @Jamie Malangyaon 

What type of project does this concern? Get that information from the Type column on the View All Projects page under the Projects menu.

Jira Cloud has no concept of a special read-only, unlicensed user. If you want to give access to specific users (and not the entire internet) then the users have to be licensed.

There is only one way to give an unlicensed user the ability to see the content of a Jira Software or Jira Work Management (Business) project if it is a Company Managed project. That is to change the Permission Scheme for the project to grant the Browse Project permission to "Public". That will make the project anonymously accessible to anybody on the internet. For Team Managed projects you would set the overall project Access to Open.

If you don't want the issue open to the entire internet, then you will need to look at third party apps that let you share the information with unlicensed users. External Share for Jira is one such app, but there may be others. (I don't work for the vendor of that app, nor have I ever actually used it before.)

[Jamie Malangyaon]

Thanks for your reply Trudy!

My project is Company managed. I had made Browsing Issues Public then did some testing:

• I had a paid-licensed Jira user access my Jira project successfully (they were not given any project roles in this project)
• I had a unlicensed user attempt to access my project but they were given a permission error.

It seems that a user has to have a paid licensed Jira Product to view my Public Company Managed Jira project. Unless from your experience - should my unlicensed user be able to view my Public Company Managed Jira project?

[Trudy Claspill]

A user doesn't have to be granted a role in a Project to be able to see the contents of the project. Whether or not they can see the project contents depends on how the Browse Projects permission has been allocated for that project. The permission can be allocated to user groups, individual users, project roles, and more.

What is the exact error the unlicensed user received? When they tried to access the project were they prompted at any point to login?

[Jamie Malangyaon]

@Trudy Claspill The unlicensed user was able to view the project only when they were logged off. When they signed in, it was prompting the user to request for access.

We ended up creating a user group with Jira Product - User Role then I added the group to the Project's Permission Scheme "Browse Projects". This way caused us to use a license but they can now browse our projects (read-only) while they are signed in.

[Trudy Claspill]

I believe I have heard elsewhere that a logged in user would be prompted to request access when trying to access content for a project that has the Browse Projects permission set to Public.