Managing Users

Viewing users

To view a list of JIRA users:

1. Log in as a user with the JIRA Administrators global permission.
2. Choose > User Management.
   Keyboard shortcut: g + g + start typing users
   
   
3. To restrict the list of users shown, use the Filter form at the top of the page.
4. To view details and login information about a user in the list, click their Username or Email Address.

Adding users

Users can be created via any of the following methods:

• Add the user directly into JIRA — see Creating a user below. You can create one user at a time, using this method.
• Invite users via email — see Inviting Users below. You can invite multiple users at the same time, using this method.
• Allow users to sign up — see Enabling Public Signup.
• Automatically create users when issue/comment creation emails are received from unknown email addresses — You can use a mail handler to allow JIRA to create issues or comments via emails received. The handler can also be configured to create new users based on the sender's email address. See Creating Issues and Comments from Email.
• Connect to an Internal Directory with LDAP Authentication — see Copying Users on First Login.

Please Note: If you have a user limited license (e.g. starter license) and have reached your user limit, any further users created will not have permission to log in to JIRA

Who can see a user?

Creating a user

To create a user:

1. Open the User browser (see Viewing Users above) and click the Create User button to open the 'Create New User' dialog box.
2. Enter the Username, Password, Full Name and Email address.
3. Optionally, select the Send Notification Email  check box to send the user an email containing:
   
   • their login name; and
   • a link from which to set their password (this link is valid for 24 hours).
4. Click the Create button.

Inviting users

You can invite one or more users to JIRA via email. Note, JIRA's SMTP mail server must be configured to send notifications before you can invite users via email.

To invite users to JIRA:

1. Open the User browser (see Viewing Users above) and click the Invite Users button to open the 'Invite Users' dialog box.
2. Enter the email addresses of the users that you want to invite. Enter each address on a new line or separate addresses using commas.
   Note, you cannot invite users by sending an invitation to a mailing list.
   
3. Click the Send button to send the invitations.
   
   • Each invitation can only be used to create a user under the email address that it was sent to, and can only be used once.
   • Each invitation will expire seven days after the day it was sent.
   • Your user license count will not be affected until users accept the invitation and the users are created. 
   • Users that are created via the invitation will be added to the 'jira-users' group.
     
    

Assigning a user to a group

When a user is created, they will be added to any groups that are set up to have new users automatically added to them.

To change a user's group membership:

1. Locate the user in the User browser (see Viewing Users above) and click the Groups link in the Operations column.
   This will display two lists; the one on the left shows all Available Groups, and the one on the right shows the Current Groups to which the user currently belongs.
2. Choose a group(s) and click the Join selected groups or Leave selected groups buttons to add/remove the user from the selected groups.

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

Assigning a user to a project role

Assigning a user to a project role enables them to fulfil a particular function in a particular project.

To assign a user to a project role:

1. To view a user's project role membership, locate the user in the User browser (see Viewing Users above) and click the Project Roles link in the Operations column. This will display a table showing all the projects and project roles that exist in JIRA, and the user's current project role membership for each project:
   

   

2. Click the Edit Project Roles button. The check boxes will then be available for you to select (to add the user to a project role) or clear (to remove the user from a project role).
   

Changing a user's name or email address

To change a user's name or email address:

1. Locate the user in the User browser (see Viewing Users above) and click their Edit link in the Operations column.
2. In the resulting form, make the required changes the user's Full Name and/or Email address.
   Do not clear the Active check box unless you want to deactivate this user.
3. Click Update to confirm the change.

Changing a user's password

To change a user's password:

1. Locate the user in the User browser (see Viewing Users above) and click their Username. This displays the user's details, below which are several links.
2. Choose Actions > Set Password.
3. Enter and confirm the new password.
4. Click the Update button.

Changing a username

This feature is only available for downloadable instances of JIRA. It is not available in JIRA On Demand.

JIRA Administrators can edit any Username in the JIRA Internal Directory (this is often referred to as the "rename user" feature). This ability is important to have if you wish to connect JIRA to an LDAP directory that does not follow the same username conventions. You also may want to do this if a staff member wishes to change their surname. Once the Username is changed in the internal directory, all parts of the JIRA interface display the updated Username.

Note: The Username is for the JIRA Internal Directory, and should not be confused with the user's display name, or Full Name, in the JIRA system.

There are some important exceptions that will prevent you from using this feature, of which you should be aware:

• Only JIRA Administrators can perform this function.
• JIRA cannot update external users – for example, users that are coming from an LDAP server or Crowd instance – it can only update users stored in the JIRA Internal Directory. (However, JIRA can update JIRA users stored in an "Internal Directory with LDAP Authentication.")
• If you are using your JIRA instance as a JIRA User Server for other applications, e.g., Confluence, you will not be able to use this feature. If you aren't sure about this, check under User Management > JIRA User Server to confirm that no external applications have been configured to use JIRA as a Crowd Server.

To change a username:

1. Locate the user in the User browser (see Viewing Users above) and click their Username. This displays the user's details, below which are several links.
2. Choose Actions > Edit Details.
3. Edit the Username.
4. Click the Update button.

Adding a property to a user

A 'Property' is an extra piece of information about a user that you can store in JIRA. A Property consists of a Key of your choice (eg. 'Phone number', 'Location') plus a corresponding Value (eg. '987 654 3210', 'Level Three'). Other than adding property data to the specified user, User Properties do not have an effect anywhere else in the project.  Plugins, however, can frequently use this data.

To create a new Property for a user:

1. Locate the user in the User browser (see Viewing Users above) and click their Username. This displays the user's details in a box.
2. Choose Actions > Edit Properties. The Edit User Properties screen will be displayed:
3. Enter the new Key and its Value, then click the Add button.

Deactivating a user

JIRA administrators can 'deactivate' a JIRA user, which disables that user's access to JIRA. This avoids the need for a JIRA administrator to delete the user's account from the system.

This feature is useful when a JIRA user leaves an organisation because a deactivated user's history of JIRA activity is preserved on the system. If a user with a deactivated JIRA account rejoins the organisation at some point in the future, their JIRA user account can be re-activated.

To deactivate a user account:

1. Locate the user in the User browser (see Viewing Users above) and click their Edit link in the Operations column.
2. In the resulting form, clear the Active check box.
3. Click Update to confirm the change.
   To re-enable the user again, repeat the steps above but instead, select the Active check box.

While a JIRA user account has been deactivated, that user:

• Will no longer be able to log in to JIRA.
• Cannot be assigned issues or added as a watcher to issues (whenever issues are created or edited). However:
  
  • A user who was assigned, was watching or had reported any issues in JIRA before their account is deactivated, will still appear as the respective assignee, watcher or reporter of those issues. This situation remains until another user is specified as the assignee or reporter of these issues, or the deactivated user is removed as a watcher from them.
  • A user who voted on any issues in JIRA before their account is deactivated, will continue to appear as a voter on these issues.
• Will continue to appear on the JIRA user interface with '(Inactive)' displayed after their name, where applicable.
• Can still be used to filter issues in a JIRA search query.
• Will not receive any email notifications from JIRA, even if they continue to remain the assignee, reporter, or watchers of issues.
• Will not count towards your JIRA user license limit. Refer to the JIRA Users global permission explanation on Managing Global Permissions for more information.
• Will not be able to create or update issues through the JIRA mail handler.

Please Note:

• Users who are project or component leads cannot be deactivated. To deactivate these users, assign other users as the relevant project or component leads first.
• Any JIRA site's users who are configured in an external Atlassian Crowd user directory and deactivated in Crowd, will be deactivated in JIRA.
• With the exception of JIRA users configured with 'delegated LDAP authentication', JIRA does not deactivate users who are configured and deactivated/disabled in an external Microsoft Active Directory or LDAP-based user directory.

Deleting a user

Rather than deleting a user, we recommend that you deactivate their account instead (as described above). Deactivating a user's account will prevent that account from being used and prevent anyone from being able to log in to JIRA using that account. However, it will preserve that user's history of activity on JIRA.

To delete a user:

1. Locate the user in the User browser (see Viewing Users above) and click the Delete link in the Operations column.
   The confirmation screen that follows will summarise any involvement of that user in the system by showing current issues assigned to and reported by that user, etc. These connections between the user and other parts of the system may prevent the deletion of that user. 
2. Take any actions required to disassociate the user with JIRA. These may include:
   • Reassigning any issues assigned to the user.
   • Bulk-editing the issues created by the user and change the 'Reporter' to someone else. You'll need the 'Modify Reporter' permission to do this. You will also need to allow editing of closed issues if some of the issues the user created are closed and you do not wish to reopen them.
   • Changing the owner of shared dashboards owned by the user. See Managing Shared Dashboards.
   • Changing the project lead for any projects that the user is a lead of.
3. If there are no issues assigned to, or reported by the user, and the user has not commented on any issues, the confirmation screen will display a Delete button. Click this to proceed with the deletion.

Please Note:

• You cannot delete a user from JIRA if they have performed any of the following actions:
  • reported or been assigned to any issues
  • commented on any issues
• The filters and dashboards of a user will be deleted when the user is deleted, regardless of whether the filters or dashboards are shared with other users.
• Any numbers of issues which have been reported by or assigned to the user you are attempting to delete, are respectively hyperlinked to a list of the individual issues (in the Issue Navigator).

Notes

• If you are using External User Management, you will not be able to create, edit or delete users from within JIRA; but you can still assign users to project roles, and create/edit/delete user properties.
• If you have JIRA connected to either a delegated LDAP directory or an LDAP directory set to 'Read Only' (see Connecting to an LDAP Directory for details), you will not be able to change a user password from within JIRA.
• Multiple user directories:
  You may define multiple user directories in JIRA, so that JIRA looks in more than one place for its users and groups. For example, you may use the default JIRA internal directory and also connect to an LDAP directory server. In such cases, you can define the directory order to determine where JIRA looks first when processing users and groups. Here is a summary of how the directory order affects the processing:

  • The order of the directories is the order in which they will be searched for users and groups.
  • Changes to users and groups will be made only in the first directory where the application has permission to make changes.

  See Managing Multiple Directories.