Managing Users

Adding Users

Users can be created via any of the following methods:

• Add the user directly into JIRA — see Adding 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

Creating a User

1. Open the User Browser (see Viewing Users above) and click the Add User button to open the 'Add New User' dialog box.
2. Enter the Username (note that this value cannot be changed once the user is created), 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.

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. An invitation to create a user account in JIRA will be sent to each email address.
   
   • 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.
2. This will display two lists; the one on the left shows all available groups, and the one on the right shows all groups to which the user currently belongs. Use the Join and Leave buttons to add the user to or remove them from your selected group.

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 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:

usermanagement-project_role_membership.png
e.g. this screenshot shows that, for the 'First Project' project:

• Mary is a member of the 'Administrators' project role.
• Mary is not a member of the 'Developers' project role.
• Mary is indirectly a member of the 'Users' project role, through being a member of the 'jira-users' group.
  (Also note that, for the 'Third Project' project, Mary is both a direct and an indirect member of the 'Users' project role.)

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

1. Locate the user in the User Browser (see Viewing Users above) and click their Edit link in the Operations column. This displays a form where you can change the user's Full Name or Email Address.
2. Click Update to confirm the change.

Changing 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. Click the Set Password link. This displays the Set Password screen.
3. Enter and confirm the new password.
4. Click the Update button.

Adding a Property to a User

A 'Property' is an extra piece of information that you can store regarding a user. A Property consists of a Key of your choice (eg. 'Phone number', 'Location') plus a corresponding Value (eg. '987 654 3210', 'Level Three').

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. Click the Edit Properties link towards the end of the page.
   
3. This displays the Edit User Properties screen, showing any previously-created properties:
   
4. Enter the new Key and its Value, then click the Add button.

Deactivating a User

Before you deactivate a user, you should:

• Reassign any open issues assigned to that user. You will need the 'Assign Issue' permission to change the assignee for the issues.
• Make sure the user is not the 'Default Assignee' for any project(s). You will need the 'Administer Project' permission to change the Default Assignee for the project(s).

To deactivate a user account:

1. Remove the user from all groups. Read Managing Groups for more information.
2. Remove the user from all project roles. Read Managing Project Role Membership for more information.

Deactivating the user account will result in the following:

• the user will not count towards your license limit.
• work log entries associated with the user will remain.
• filter subscriptions will continue to be sent to the user — If this is a problem, you can change the user's email address in JIRA to an imaginary address, e.g. user@example.com.

There is currently no "disabled user" user type in JIRA.

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 issues history.

Please Note: Before you delete a user, you should bulk-edit the issues involved and change the reporter to someone else. You will need the 'Modify Reporter' permission to change the reporter for the issues. 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.

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.
2. 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. For example, attempting to delete a user called test-user results in the following screen, which prevents deletion due to the presence of one assigned and two reported issues:
   usermanagement-deletion_not.png
   As well as reassigning any issues, you may need to bulk-edit the issues created by the user and change the 'Reporter' to someone else. You'll need the 'Modify Reporter' permission to do this.
3. If there are no issues assigned to, or reported by the user, the confirmation screen will display a Delete button; click this to proceed with the deletion.

Please Note:

• Please note that 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.