Symptoms

Sometimes it is necessary to disable your users' access to JIRA during maintenance windows while you are importing or exporting your environment, or bulk disable unnecessary users following an import to a test instance. 

Environment

This KB is applicable only for Jira 8.0 and later and for Cloud

Diagnosis

During an Import or Export of your Environment or other maintenance windows, you want to disable user JIRA access to prevent any changes during that period. 

Resolution

1. Choose  > User Management (g+g > User Management). Under Add Group enter a name for the group that you, for this example, we are using a name of Limited-Access and click on Add Group 
2. Add your Admin Account(s), or any users that need to maintain access to this instance
3. For Server and DataCenter : choose  > JIRA Administration > Applications> Application Access, (or g+g > Application Access) and Add the new group Limited-Access to the application. See also Manage group access to applications
   For Cloud : go to Settings > User management and then, select Application access.  Add the new group Limited-Access to the application. See also Atlassian Cloud: Application access
4. Change the Default  to the new group. Note down which group was Default, usually this would be jira-software-users or jira-servicedesk-users, but this might be different in your environment
5. Remove other groups from the Application access. Note down which groups you have removed
6. Perform the necessary maintenance and once complete, add back the previous removed groups back and change the Default back as well.