Unable to change email address or name for all users

Question

Sometimes our users change their names or email addresses.

For Atlassian/Jira/Confluence, we use Log in with Google with Single Sign On. Neither the users nor the admins can update a user's email address or name in Atlassian.

When the user tries to do it, it says:

Your account is managed.
Contact your administrator to change your email address.

In the admin user settings, there is no option to change the email address or name. Atlassian/Jira/Confluence doesn't seem to pick up that the user's email address has changed in Google.

How can we update a user's email address? We don't want to lose all their settings by re-creating the account.

Dave Meyer · Answer

@Nathan Yang there is an explanation of "Managed accounts" here: https://support.atlassian.com/user-management/docs/what-are-managed-accounts/

Basically, any Atlassian account that was created with an email address belonging to your company will show up on the Managed Accounts list. On the Product page in user management, you're only seeing the specific accounts that have access to that particular Jira or Confluence instance.

Without more information, I'm not sure how to explain the error you saw.

Nathan Yang · Answer

Well that's interesting. We've never used the Directory > Managed Accounts to manage users. Instead, we've been going to: Products > User Management > Users

When I try to edit users in the Directory management, it gives me an error:

Cannot load user details

Try again later.

There are 600 active users in our Directory management (400 of which are former employees who shouldn't have any access). Product management only shows 200 active users in the User Management section, which is what we expect.

Why are these 2 lists so different, and what's the difference in their usage?

Dave Meyer · Answer

Hi @Nathan Yang ,

If it says the account is managed and you're logging in with Google, it means the user's email address needs to be update via Google, or the administrator of the organization that configured the G Suite SSO set up with Atlassian needs to update the email address (following these instructions).

It sounds like if you're not able to follow these instructions, you're not an administrator of the organization. If that's the case, our support team can help you identify who that would be.

Dave