No project could be found with key 'SALES'

[Sergei Gridnevskii]

I am the main Jira administrator for a cloud Jira and my collegue from another department created new project for his needs. When he asks me to fix something in project I cannot do that - Jira says that this project cannot be found. However I know for sure that it exists and I saw issues on collegues' PC.

He cannot add me to any role on this project because it is another department and they need to keep things private.

I tried the link that I use to go to project config, but get the error in subject.

https://mycompany.atlassian.net/projects/SALES/settings/details

1. I understand that I should not have access to project data, but why does Jira restrict me from configuration? I am a site administrator, why are there parts of site that can not be configured by me?

2. The error message displayed is misleading. I'm sure it would be better to have something like "Project exists but we do not want you to have access to it because some ozzy managers decided to not let administrators have full power".

3. Is there a secret button to let me configure projects where I do not have any role? In Confluence it is possible if you have Admin role. Why it is not possible in Jira?

[fran garcia gomera]

Why in the URL of destination of your link the key of the project is ITOP?

I agree with @Deniz Oğuz - The Starware when you are a jira admin you should have access in https://{your_site}/secure/project/BrowseProjects.jspa?s=view_projects to every project in jira

[Deniz Oğuz - The Starware]

1. If you are a site administrator you can configure any project setting. You just need to give yourself permission. You can navigate to:

Settings->Projects->Projects than click on "..." and select "project settings" and than "Permissions"

Or you can just navigate to:

https://site_url/plugins/servlet/project-config/PROJECT_KEY/permissions

2. This error message is intentional. Jira is trying to hide project details, even it's key and name as much as possible.

3. See answer 1.

[Sergei Gridnevskii]

Nope, 1 does not work, it says

No project could be found with key 'PROJECT_KEY'.

(I replaced site_url and PROJECT_KEY with appropriate values).

If I know the project key, what's the point to hide it? OK, for cloud this can make sense, but for local Jira any admin can go to database and find out all project keys easily. Or as I wrote impersonate as user from this project. 

I understand we have to hide things from externals, but what's the point of hiding configuration settings from site admin?

[Sergei Gridnevskii]

By the way if atlassian guys care about private data, they do it the wrong way because I can easily impersonate as my colleague and read any private data I want. They think they solved the issue by hiding the project from site administrators, but in fact they left a detour that turns all of their efforts into nothing.