Managing Global Permissions

Global permissions are system wide and are granted to groups of users.

See also project permissions, which apply to individual projects.

This table lists the different global permissions and the functions they secure:

About 'JIRA System Administrators' and 'JIRA Administrators'

People who have the JIRA System Administrators permission can perform all of the administration functions in JIRA, while people who have only the JIRA Administrators permission cannot perform functions which could affect the application environment or network. This is useful for organisations which need to delegate some administrative privileges (e.g. creating users, creating projects) to particular people, without granting them complete rights to administer the JIRA system.

By default, the jira-administrators group has both the JIRA Administrators permission and the JIRA System Administrators permission. If you need some people to have only the JIRA Administrators permission (and not the JIRA System Administrators permission), you will need to use two separate groups, e.g.:

1. Create a new group (e.g. called jira-system-administrators).
2. Add to the jira-system-administrators group everyone who needs to have the JIRA System Administrators permission.
3. Grant the JIRA System Administrators permission to the jira-system-administrators group.
4. Remove the JIRA System Administrators permission from the jira-administrators group.
5. (Optional, but recommended for ease of maintenance) Remove from the jira-administrators group everyone who is a member of the jira-system-administrators group.

People who have the JIRA Administrators permission (and not the JIRA System Administrators permission) cannot do the following:

• Configure JIRA's SMTP mail server for notifications (but they can configure POP/IMAP mail servers for the receipt of email messages that create issue comments and new issues, and fully administer email notification schemes).
• Configure a CVS source code repository (but they can associate a project with a configured repository).
• Configure listeners.
• Configure services (except for POP/IMAP services).
• Change the index path (but they can reindex and optimise the index).
• Run the integrity checker.
• Access logging and profiling information.
• Access the scheduler.
• Export/backup JIRA data to XML.
• Import/restore JIRA data from XML.
• Import XML workflows into JIRA.
• Configure attachments (but they can set the size limits of attachments and enable thumbnails).
• Enable trackbacks.
• Run Jelly scripts.
• Add gadgets to the Gadget Directory.
• Configure user directories (e.g. LDAP).
• Configure Application Links (but they can configure Entity Links).
• View user sessions.
• Access license details.
• Grant/revoke the JIRA System Administrators global permission.
• Edit (or Bulk Edit) groups that have the JIRA System Administrators global permission.
• Edit, change the password of or delete a user who has the JIRA System Administrators global permission.

It is recommended that people who have the JIRA Administrators permission (and not the JIRA System Administrators permission) are not given direct access to the JIRA filesystem or database.

Granting global permissions

1. Log in as a user with the JIRA Administrators global permission (or the JIRA System Administrators global permission, if you need to grant the JIRA System Administrators global permission).
2. Select 'Administration' > 'Users' > 'Global Permissions' to open the Global Permissions page, which shows a list of JIRA's global permissions and which groups currently have these permissions.
   Keyboard shortcut: 'g' + 'g' + start typing 'global permissions'
   Screenshot 1: the Global Permissions screen
   
   The Add Permission box is shown below the list.
3. In the Permission drop-down list, select the global permission you wish to grant.
4. In the Groupdrop-down list, either:
   • select the group to which you wish to grant the permission; or

   • if you wish to grant the permission to non logged-in users, select Anyone (not recommended for production systems). Note that the JIRA Users permission (i.e. permission to log in) cannot be granted to Anyone(i.e. to non logged-in users) since this would be contradictory.

     If you have a user limited license (e.g. personal license) and have reached your user limit, you will not be able to grant login permissions (i.e. jira-users permission) to any further groups without first reducing the number of users with login permissions.