Managing JIRA access for users

[Koushik Roy]

I am managing JIRA access for user without any formal training and I am learning on the go and I am having issues managing requests from user as the license window shows that I dont have any JIRA Service Desk 4.5.8 license left(out of 10) to allocate and have used up 23 out of 25 licenses for JIRA Software 8.5.8, We also use Confluence and also receive requests from users to create projects in JIRA.

Now I am not sure what JIRA component(Software/ Helpdesk/ Confluence etc) grants what access to end users and how do I manage the licenses efficiently.

Also do anyone other than me need to be a part of the JIRA Administrator group as I thought its any JIRA administrator who should be able to create and delete users in JIRA!

Broadly I would like to know the scope for the different JIRA options we have(Service Desk/ Software/ Confluence/ Project creation(how to)/ Administrator?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Jira can be quite complicated here, as it's got several components that have different access models.

Most of the access is controlled by groups though, and you can see (and amend) the relevant groups in two places.

The way the groups kick in is quite simple - each application and global permission is granted to one or more groups.  If you are in a group, you get to use the thing the access is for.

For the three applications, if you go to Admin -> Manage applications, you should see the three Jira applications listed, along with the group(s) that can use them.  The applications are Core, Software and Service Management (but there is a slight wrinkle in that Software and Service Desk users can also use Core.  This does not have affect your user count - if you give someone a Core licence and a Software licence, they won't count towards your Core usage because their Software one covers it)

The admin roles are controlled by groups under Admin -> Global permissions.  All admins consume a licence even if they're not in one of the application groups.

Confluence works the same, but there are no applications for it, so it's just a "can log in" group and admin groups.

The other type of access is "customers" - these can only use the Service Management portals, they can't get to your projects or issues.  But they do not consume any licences, so you don't need to worry about them for licensing (a licence for 1-3 Agents lets you have as many customers as you want).  Customers also get to read knowledge-base articles out of Confluence, but only for linked and dedicated knowledge base spaces, they're not "confluence users"

So, to create a project in Jira, you need to be an administrator.  You can have other roles too, but admin is required for admin tasks like new projects.  Administrators are application agnostic too - it doesn't matter if you've got Core, Software and/or Service Management, an admin is an admin across all of them.

[Koushik Roy]

Thank you for your response.

We have the JIRA server and not the cloud version. All I know that we have 10 JIRA Service Desk 4.58 license(almost exhausted as have used up 9)  and 25 Jira Software 8.5.8(22 used up - screenshot attached - 1.PNG). I am not sure what is the scope of this two features and if it included JIRA Core and its scope also!

I know JIRA Service Desk users can work on jobs/ tickets and can assign tickets to others also? Does it include any other activities other than that?

What can a user do with the JIRA Software and JIRA core access? And their licence implication?

We also have JIRA confluence, do the JIRA confluence eat up any of the above licenses or does it require separate explicit license? What license is required for Confluence administrator and Jira administrator?(Screenshot attached - 2.PNG)

Did you mean to say that someone to be able to create a project and manage it, they need to be JIRA administrator also? Is there any way of granting project creation access to a user via Project roles and not by giving admin access(Screenshot attached - 3.PNG)?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Your second screenshot is the one that shows us the most important stuff (if you were on Cloud, your third one would also have shown us some of it, but server is a bit less helpful there)

So a quick breakdown:

You have no Core users set up, so I'll stop talking about that.  (Your Software and Service Desk users are using core, but as part of their Software and Service Desk licence, so we don't need to worry about it)

The Service Desk users are allowed to be Agents - they can use all the functions in Service Desk projects. 

The Software users can use all the Scrum and Kanban functions in Software projects.

Your Software-only users can not use Service Desk projects in full, they only have limited access, they can see, comment, be named in, and do some other stuff in these projects, but they can not transition issues, configure the portals, be assigned to issues, log work on them and so-on.  Equally, Service Desk Agent-only people can not use the boards and scrum/kanban features in Software projects.

So, take a look at your second screenshot with that in mind.  It tells you what groups are named for getting access to the various applications.  To find out who is consuming licences, look at each named group, get the list of people in it, and add them all together (deduplicate though - if someone is in three different groups that grant Service Desk for example, they still only take up one licence)

Your administrator groups are handled elsewhere.  Look in "global permissions" to see what groups are granted admin.  Again, you'll want to look through those lists and de-duplicate.