What is the difference between the customers listed under JSM and Users on the Atlassian Admin page?

[Fahad Akhtar]

Hi,

I'm a site-admin. I only became a site-admin a while back and before I was one there were a list of customers under the Jira Service Management/portal customers tab on the Atlassian Administration page. There are also a list of customers and users under the Users tab on the Atlassian Administration page. What is the difference? I can't find the list of people under the portal customers tab on the User's tab and vice versa? What is the difference in terms of access? Which one has access to the portal? 

[Benjamin]

@Fahad Akhtar - What I'm aware of is that the portal customer ones are specifically to that portal. Keep in mind, you can have many service desk each having its own portal and customers. The user management one is across the entire site. Hope that helps.

-Ben

[Fahad Akhtar]

@Benjamin I'm confused when you say each service desk has its own portal. My configuration is that I have ~56 projects in Jira. For each project there are customers from one company. I give these customers the service desk customer project role after inviting them to Jira. When I invite them I do not give them access to Jira Service Management meaning they do not get a license. 

I have a customer account to test these things out. When I log in as a customer I will see the portal and in there only the project I have been assigned to. 

Wouldn't the customers I give the service desk customer project role to be considered portal customers? I ask because when I go to portal customers there is one group of customers that were added long before I came along and they are under portal customers but not users and the people under users are not under portal customers. Neither have licenses. Why is that?

-Fahad