Manage space permissions
Space permissions are managed in two ways:
Jira admins manage space permissions for company-managed spaces through permission schemes. This page discusses permission schemes for company-managed spaces in detail.
Space admins manage space permissions for team-managed spaces through custom roles. Read more about custom roles in team-managed spaces.
Every company-managed space has a permission scheme. A permission scheme grants users, groups, or roles their permissions in your company-managed spaces. Read the details of each available space permission.
You can't edit space permissions or roles on the Free plan for Jira, and you can't configure work-level security on any Free plan (including Jira Service Management). Find out more about how permissions work in Free plans. To take advantage of Jira's powerful space permission management features, upgrade your plan.
Like other schemes in Jira, changes you make a to permission scheme update the permissions for any of the company-managed spaces associated with the scheme. This makes it easy for Jira admins to manage the permissions of many spaces at once, without having to adjust each space's settings individually. Once a permission scheme is set up, it can be applied to all spaces that have the same type of access requirements.
Permission schemes set permissions at the space level. You may still want to adjust permissions across your Jira site through global permissions. For example, allowing users to create shared objects like filters, or make bulk work item changes. Read more about global permissions.
Create a permission scheme
To create a permission scheme:
Select Settings (), then select Work items.
From the sidebar, select Permission Schemes. The Permission Schemes page opens. It displays a list of all the permission schemes in your Jira site and the spaces that use each scheme.
Select Add Permission Scheme. The Add Permission Scheme form appears.
Give your new scheme a name, and add a short description of the scheme. Descriptions help you identify schemes in the future.
Select Add.
Your newly added scheme appears on the Permission Schemes page, but it’s an empty vessel. To use the scheme properly, you need to:
Add users, groups, and roles to the scheme and grant their space permissions.
Associate the scheme with the spaces that should use it.
Add users, groups, or roles to a permission scheme and grant their space permissions
The permission scheme itself is just an object that Jira references when checking permission in your spaces. To make the scheme useful, you need to grant users, groups, and/or roles their space permissions in the scheme.
To add users, groups, or roles to a permission scheme, and grant them space permissions:
Select Settings (), then select Work items.
Select Permission Schemes to open the Permission Schemes page, which displays a list of all permission schemes in your Jira system and the spaces that use each scheme.
Locate the permission scheme you would like to update, and select Permissions in the Actions column to view the scheme.
For each permissions available, select Update to grant the permission to a user, group, or role. This displays the Grant permission dialog. Read the details of each available space permission.
In the Grant permission dialog, select who to grant the permission to and click the Grant button. You can grant permissions to:
Individual users, which your site admin can invite to your Jira apps. Find out about inviting users.
Groups, which your site admin sets up. Find out about groups.
Space roles, which Jira administrators can set up in advance. Find out about space roles.
Work item roles such as Reporter, Space owner, and Current Assignee.
Public, which can make work items public to the internet. Find out about anonymous access.
A (multi-)user picker custom field.
A (multi-)group picker custom field. This can either be an actual group picker custom field, or a (multi-)select-list whose values are group names.
Some permissions are dependent upon others to ensure that users can perform the actions needed. For example, for a user to be able to Edit work items in the space, they first must be able to access the space with the Browse space permission. Or, for a user to be able to resolve a work item, they must also be able to transition the work item. Read the details of each available space permission.
Granting permission to anyone
Granting the Browse space permission to Public means work items from spaces that use the permission scheme are publicly viewable on the internet. You may legitimately want to grant public access to some spaces and work items on your site, like in the case of a public bug tracker. Find out about anonymous access.
Some permissions require app access
Some space permissions are only usable if your users also have access to the Atlassian app that checks the permission. For example, if you give someone the permission to Edit work items in a software space, they still require app access to Jira to gain that permission.
If you add people to a role that grants these permissions, make sure they have app access to Jira (for software spaces) or Jira Service Management (for service spaces). If not, they may encounter problems and won’t get the full benefit of the features you intended them to use. Otherwise, these users will see a read-only version of the spaces you intend them to work on.
Only your site admin can grant individuals app access. Find out about app access.
The Browse space permission may make space details visible to all users in directories and while searching Jira
There’s a known issue when granting a User custom field value, Reporter, Current assignee, or Group custom field value the Browse space permission. In these cases, a space becomes visible to any logged in user on your Jira site.
The issue is caused by an intentional design in Jira’s backed that couples the Browse space and View work item permissions.
Space titles will be visible to some admins
Organization admins and authorized Guard Detect admins can see space titles in audit logs and security alerts. They won’t be able to see space content, just the title.
Use space roles to help scale your Jira site as your company grows
We recommend assigning permissions through space roles, rather than individual users or group access. Referencing space roles rather than users or groups in your permissions can help you minimize the number of permission schemes in your system. They can help you save time when managing users across your site, and how they can act in each space you create in Jira. Read more about space roles in Jira.
Associate a permission scheme with a company-managed space
Once you have your space permission grants figured out, you can put the scheme into effect by associating it with the spaces its meant to govern.
To associate a permission scheme with a company-managed space:
Choose Settings (), then select Spaces.
Search for and select the space you want to change permissions for.
Next to the name of your space in the sidebar, select More actions (•••), then Space settings.
Select Permissions from the sidebar. This displays the current permissions scheme.
Click the Actions dropdown menu and choose Use a different scheme.
On the Associate Permission Scheme to Space page, select the permission scheme you want to associate with the space.
Click the Associate button to associate the space with the permission scheme.
Your space's permissions are updated and the space now follows your permission scheme. Any updates you make the scheme or its grants apply immediately to the space associated with the scheme.
Remove users, groups, or roles from a permission scheme
To remove users, groups, or roles from a permission scheme:
Select Settings (), then select Work items.
Select Permission Schemes to open the Permission Schemes page, which displays a list of all permission schemes in your Jira system and the spaces that use each scheme.
Locate the permission scheme of interest and click its name to show the list of space permissions (above).
Click the Remove link for the permission you wish to remove the users, groups, or roles from.
Select the users, groups, or roles you wish to remove, and click the Remove button.
Removing users and groups for a permission scheme doesn’t remove these people from Jira entirely. Only site admins can remove users from your Jira site. Read more about how to remove users entirely from your Atlassian site.
Copy a permission scheme
Some spaces may require only minor tweaks to an existing permission scheme. In these cases, you can use the existing permission scheme as a starting point for a new scheme. Copying a permission scheme gives you this quick start to tweak a scheme and meet the requirements for a new space.
To copy a permission scheme:
Select Settings (), then select Work items.
From the sidebar, select Permission Schemes. The Permission Schemes page opens. It displays a list of all the permission schemes in your Jira site and the spaces that use each scheme.
In the Actions column, click the Copy link for the scheme that you want to copy.
A new scheme is created with the same permissions and the same users, groups, or roles assigned to them. You can find it in your list of permission schemes with the name Copy of <My permission scheme name>.
Delete a permission scheme
Every company-managed space requires a permission scheme to function. If you delete a permission scheme that’s associated with one or more spaces, those spaces will fall back to using the Default Permission Scheme. You can't delete the default permission scheme.
To delete a permission scheme:
Select Settings (), then select Work items.
From the sidebar, select Permission Schemes. The Permission Schemes page opens. It displays a list of all the permission schemes in your Jira site and the spaces that use each scheme.
In the Actions column, click the Delete link for the scheme that you want to delete.
In Jira, you can delete the Default software scheme, but this is superficial. Jira will recreate this permission scheme if you create a new company-managed software space, and associate it to your new space.
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