Setting up service desk users

The page introduces you to service desk project roles and groups, which you can use to manage service desk users and Jira application licenses. 

To set up and manage users, you must be logged in as an Jira administrator. When you invite agents to a service desk project, these users are automatically added to the Service Desk Team project role, and assigned to groups associated with a service desk license. When you invite customers to a service desk project, these users do not consume a service desk license, but are similarly added to the Service Desk Customers project role and given restricted access to the customer portal.

Overview of project roles

The following table summarizes the default service desk project roles: 

Managing service desk agents

Add agents to a service desk project

Easily invite new agents from your service desk project sidebar:

1. Select Invite Team and enter the agent's username (for existing system users) or email address (for new users). You'll see an updated Jira Service Desk agent license count based on the number of new agents. 
2. Select Invite. 

Once invited, your new agents will receive an email with a link to your service desk project and be automatically added to the Service Desk Team project role and service-desk-users license group.

Remove agents 

To remove an agent from your service desk project:

1. In your project, go to Project administration > Users and roles. 
2. Hover over the user or group you'd like to remove from the Service Desk Team project role and select . 

Note that removing an agent from your project does not revoke the agent's license. To free up an agent license, your administrator will need to proceed to  > User management and remove the agent's Jira Service Desk  application access. 

Managing service desk customers

Add customers to a service desk project:

You can manually invite customers, or open your service desk to allow customers to create their own service desk accounts.

To manually invite customers:

1. In your service desk project, select Customers and then select Invite customers. 
2. Enter your customer's email address or invite multiple customers. Your customers will receive their new account details by email and will be added to the Service Desk Customer project role. 

If your administrators have already enabled public signup, you can open up your service desk project to allow new customers to create accounts on the customer portal or send requests by email, which creates an account for them automatically. To open up your service desk: 

1. In your service desk project, go to Project administration > Request security. 
2. Select "Anyone can sign up for a customer account" and select Save.

Remove customers

Removing customers from your service desk project depends on your project's request security settings, which you can check in Project administration > Request security.

If your request security settings are set to "Only people on my customers list can raise a request", you can remove customers with these steps: 

1. In your service desk project, go to Project administration > Users and roles.
2. Hover over the user or group you would like to remove from the Service Desk Customer role and select .

If your request security settings are set to "Anyone can sign up for a customer account", or "Only people who have an account", your administrator will need to deactivate customer accounts by going to  > User management. 

How restricted customer access works

The permissions assigned to customers are granted to the Service Desk Customer - Portal Access security type instead of the Service Desk Customers role. The Service Desk Customer - Portal Access security type gives people access to the Customer Portal only (not Jira). This security type checks the Service Desk Customers role to determine who are customers. So in summary, the security type and the role work hand in hand to make sure that customers get the permissions they need to use the Customer Portal and cannot access Jira.

For example, if you want your customers to be able to create requests through your Customer Portal, grant the Create Issues permission to the Service Desk Customer - Portal Access security type, not the Service Desk Customers role.

Involving Jira Software and Jira Core users

Jira application users without a Jira Service Desk license (e.g. Jira Software developers) can assist your team of agents on issues by working in the unlicensed view of a service desk project. 

As an example of how to involve other Jira application users, Martin, an IT service desk team agent, links an incident ticket in a service desk project to an underlying network problem ticket in a Jira Software project. Andrew, a Jira Software developer on the network operations team, assigns this network issue to himself and starts working on it. After fixing the problem, Andrew opens the linked service desk incident ticket and leaves an internal comment asking Martin to try the network connection again. After receiving the internal comment, Martin verifies the network connection and tells the customer that the problem is resolved.

Add Jira Core or Jira Software users to your service desk project

1. In your project, go to Project administration > Users and roles.
2. Select Add users to a role.
3. Search for the users you'd like to add and choose the Service Desk Team role. 
4. Select Add. 

Jira Core and Jira Software users in the Service Desk Team project roll will have restricted access to your service desk project and will only be able to see issues with which they're involved. Adding Jira core and Jira Software users to the Service Desk Team project role will not assign them to a service desk agent license. 

Remove Jira application users

1. In your project, go to Project administration > Users and roles.
2. To remove users from your service desk project only, simply hover over the user or group you wish to remove and select .

To remove or deactivate users, your administrator will need to proceed to  > User management. 

User management documentation

Check out the following documentation to learn more about managing users and permissions: