Symptoms

All JIRA users are unable to browse projects, issues, tasks or any other content.

When any user logs in, the Projects and Issues tabs are missing.

Causes

The group 'users' has been deleted from the instance.

The group 'users' is the default group configured under the JIRA Users Global Permissions. Removing the group causes every user to stop being a JIRA User. Users with Application Access to JIRA will appear to be logged in but will see the Log In link at the top right.

The group 'users' is also the default group configured to Browse projects. Removing the group disables the ability to Browse projects and thus see any issues.

Resolution

The following steps will restore the default configuration. A custom configuration might require different steps.

Create the users group and assign users and permissions to it by doing:

• log in with an administrator account
• navigate to Groups administration: https://<instance-name>/secure/admin/user/GroupBrowser.jspa
• add group 'users' with the Add Group tool on the right.
• add all users required to login to the new group 'users' using the 'Bulk Edit Group Members' tool
• navigate to Global Permissions: https://<instance-name>/secure/admin/GlobalPermissions!default.jspa 
• add the group to JIRA Users Permissions at the bottom of the page
• by default the group 'users' also has Browse Users, Create Shared Objects, Manage Group Filter Subscriptions and Bulk Change permissions.
  add the 'users' group to those permissions as well to restore the default configuration. 
• navigate to Projects administration: https://<instance-name>/secure/project/ViewProjects.jspa
• for every project listed, add the group 'users' to the Role Users.