Announcing new permission for Version management(Releases) in Jira Cloud

[#1]

Hi Community!

We’re excited to announce a new permission for version management in Jira Cloud! This highly requested feature brings a new level of flexibility, control, and efficiency to how teams manage versions, empowering organisations to delegate responsibilities more precisely and securely.

What’s new?

With this release, we’re introducing a new “Manage Versions” project permission. This allows you to grant specific users, groups, or roles the ability to create, release, archive, merge, edit, and delete versions in a project—without giving them full project administrator privileges.

Key highlights:

• Assign version management to trusted users, not just the project administrator

• Reduce bottlenecks and improve release workflows

• Enhance security by limiting broader project administrator access

What’s changing?

Previously, only users with the “Administer Projects” permission could manage versions. Now, you can assign the new “Manage Versions” permission independently, giving you more flexibility and control.

• Before: Only project administrators could create, release, archive, merge, edit, and delete versions in a project

• Now: Any user or group or role with the “Manage Versions” permission can manage versions, while project admins retain all their existing capabilities.

Who is impacted?

This change affects:

• Jira

• Jira Service Management

This is available on company-managed and team-managed projects.

Why did we make this change?

We heard from many of you that tying version management to “Administer Projects” permission created bottlenecks and security concerns. Teams needed a way to delegate version management without exposing sensitive project settings unnecessarily.

By introducing granular permissions, we’re helping you:

• Empower the right people to manage releases

• Reduce administrator overhead

• Improve security and compliance

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How can I get started?

To grant users, groups, or roles the “Manage Versions” permission

1. Select Settings (), then select Work items.

2. Select Permission Schemes in the sidebar to open the Permission Schemes page.

3. Select the permission scheme you would like to update.

4. For the Manage Versions permission, select Update to grant the permission to a user, group, or role.

For more details, please check out: https://support.atlassian.com/jira-cloud-administration/docs/manage-project-permissions/.

Feedback and questions

We’d love to hear how “Manage Versions” permission helps your team, and what else you’d like to see. Please share your thoughts and questions in the comments below or via our support.

Thank you for being part of the Atlassian Community!
The Atlassian Team

[HIROTA Takayuki_Ricksoft_]

I'm happy to see the recent improvements to "Version management." As a Jira fan, my favorite feature is probably "Releases."

[Jacques]

Hey @Justin Thomas this is great news! However, I checked some sites I have access to and this permission is not yet available. What is the roll-out date for this?

[Ben Ernest-Jones]

This is useful... even more useful would be a separate permission for managing project components.

[Cornelia Jeppsson]

Hi! Great news, been waiting for this one a long time! We don't see this option in our cloud site, would love to know when we are supposed to since the article seems to incidate that it should already be available? 

[Adrián Plaza]

@Justin Thomas great news! Do you have plans to have the same permissions but for "Components"?

[Schal_ Thomas]

thank you for implementing this

[Yatish Madhav]

Thanks for implementing - the more granular the permissions, the better!

Same comment/question as @Adrián Plaza  and @Ben Ernest-Jones - Component permissions?

Thank you.
Yatish

[Jonathan Santos]

Hello team, this feature was eagerly awaited by several users of the instances I manage.

Let's try it out to see how it works.

Thank you

[John Elder]

Awesome feature/improvement, along with the ability to restrict/grant work item layouts.  I second the idea behind separating "Components" administration from overall Project Administration.

[Monica Brazelton]

This is great and I'm so glad to see it on our Cloud instance. Thanks Atlassian! Let's do a Manage Components permission next!

[Susan Hauth _Jira Queen_]

Fantastic!! We have been waiting for this for a long time and this is going to make many of my project leads very happy.  Well done.

[Justin Thomas]

@Jacques The feature has been rolled out to all customers on the continuous release track. Is your site, by any chance, on the bundled release track?

[Justin Thomas]

@Adrián Plaza Unfortunately, permissions for Components are not currently on the short-term roadmap. Please vote on the feature request and watch it to receive updates when we pick it up.

[Cornelia Jeppsson]

Hi @Justin Thomas We are on the continuous release track and still haven't got it. I checked just now. 

[Pedro Olmo]

@Justin Thomas  Great news!! 

[Jason Armistead]

@Justin Thomas  This is a good START, but it's not what I'd call the desired "end state"

The Manage Versions (Releases) permission allows people to create, release, archive, merge, edit and delete versions in a project.

It would be nice if there were multiple levels of access. I consider that being able to Delete or Archive a version might be considered "higher level" functions requiring a more senior person to wield those super-powers and for this reason, maybe they should be separate from the others.

I'm curious to know what others think.

There is also an issue (not related to this new function, but brought to my attention as I was using it), in that if you Update and want to grant to a Group, then the list of groups in the resulting drop-down list is not alphabetical. This makes it unnecessarily harder to search for a specific group name, especially if you have chosen some sort of naming scheme for them, e.g. Department-Project-Members.

I opened Support Ticket # JST-1178356 about this in case you want to see what I mean.