Inviting External Users & Companies

[Joshua Stokes]

Hello,

I am looking for some support around external companies & individuals.

What we need to setup is the ability to invite external users and/or external companies into one of our JSM Projects (Jira Cloud / Team Managed Project)

Do I need to setup a separate group, where our HR department can invite the external companies and users into the system? 

The main function of this group will be to Invite External companies and Individuals into JSM.

Is the above possible? If so, how would I go about creating this within our platform.

Thanks for the help in advance!

[Walter Buggenhout]

Hi @Joshua Stokes,

External users are users like any other, with the one exception that you don't manage or own their accounts. Unless of course you create accounts for them yourself in your own user directory and share with them. In that case they become managed users like your own.

How to set this up depends on:

• your company policies (is it ok for external people to access your systems with their own external account or do you want to create accounts for them that you control and they can use?)
• whether you are integrating with a company managed IdP or are using separate Atlassian accounts? This will have a significant impact on who will be allowed to manage membership / access.

Yes, you can set up a group per external company (I would recommend doing so, if only for clarity which users belong to which company). But membership is most commonly managed by either IT or your company's Atlassian Org Admin - rarely HR. Linking that/those group(s) to the appropriate role(s) in your project takes care of the correct permissions in your project. If your external users are also more than customers, they may additionally need a license to use JSM features internally as well. You can put them in a separate group for external user product access to JSM in that case.

Hope this helps!