Can one company use multiple Jira organizations (subdomains) and still control user accounts?

[eirens]

My group is set up with Jira Software Cloud at (for example) "my_group.atlassian.net".

All that is working. We set up DNS records for that subdomain per this article years ago: https://support.atlassian.com/user-management/docs/verify-a-domain-to-manage-accounts/

We control those Jira accounts when they use our company's email domain in their Jira login email addresses. Good.

But now it's changing and I have a question. Now a totally different group at our company wants to have their own Jira Software Cloud organization (totally_different_group.atlassian.net).

Can those guys (the new group) manage users for the same domains we manage? How would we do that since my understanding is that Atlassian periodically checks the our_company.com domain (DNS) for the string proving we control it.

We do not want these two very different groups to share a Jira organization (subdomain.atlassian.net).

Seems to me that there must be companies (Atlassian customers) who want to control their user accounts (common domain name) across multiple Jira Software Cloud organizations. Right? I hope so.

Note: To be clear, the two independent groups at my company might have some users (email address logins) in common, but very few. And I'm not trying to find out how to only get charged for those users one time (not twice). I don't care about that. My interest/question is different — described above.

[Connor]

Hi eirens, I think that's possible, here's Atlassian's documentation on multiple instances under one organization.

[eirens]

Thank you, @Connor

I have now read the article you linked to.

I'm not sure that it tells me how to handle the domain name control (same domain name used by multiple Jira instances/organizations/subdomains) so that we can still control user accounts. We currently have our Jira organization (e.g. my_group.atlassian.net) controlling our company's domain name via DNS. (See article in my original message in this thread.)

We would like user accounts of the new group looking at adopting Jira (totally_different_group.atlassian.net) to be controlled by an administrator of that Jira organization.

We would strongly prefer that the users of totally_different_group.atlassian.net not be able to access my_group.atlassian.net and vice versa. We want separation, but without giving up user account control by domain name. The users of both organizations will use email addresses with the same company domain name (e.g. our_company.com).

[Connor]

Hi eirens, the domain verification verifies you control your company's domain, our_company.com, it doesn't control the URL used for accessing your Jira site, my_group.atlassian.net.

You wouldn't create two Atlassian organizations because you would only be able to verify your domain for 1 of those organizations. From the article you linked:

If someone else has already verified the domain, we’ll display a warning message letting you know. In this situation, someone at your company might have verified the domain under another organization. We recommend that you find an admin of that organization and ask them to remove the domain from its list of verified domains. If you aren't sure who to ask, contact support.

For the scenario you describe you should use 1 organization with 2 Jira sites, 1 for each group. User management for both groups would be handled at the organization level. Here's an example.

Two separate development groups, group1 and group2, work at orgexample.com, and users of both groups use the same domain name for their email addresses. Both groups want to use Jira, but don't want the other group viewing their work. To accomplish this the administrators of orgexample.com:

• Create an Atlassian organization titled "Org Example" and verify their domain orgexample.com
• Under the Atlassian organization, create a Jira site titled "Group 1" which uses a URL of group1.atlassian.net
• Under the Atlassian organization, create a Jira site titled "Group 2" which uses a URL of group2.atlassian.net
• Group1 users are licensed only for accessing group1.atlassian.net
• Group2 users are licensed only for accessing group2.atlassian.net

Here's a similar question to yours that might help explain this more.

[eirens]

Thank you, @Connor ! That's exactly what I was asking about. I still have some questions in the area:

1. How to create a new Jira Software Cloud site under my existing organization, for that other group.

2. How to ensure that admins for that new group's Jira don't have access to my Jira (because of separation, but more importantly because we don't want to pay for them to have access they won't use). Is this possible to do?

[Connor]

That's great I'm glad I could help, remember to accept my answer :)

1. This documentation explains how to add another Jira site. 
2. I'm not certain about this because my organization only has 1 site. Organization admins are automatically made site-admins for sites and site-admins have product access. With 2+ sites it may be possible to restrict org admins to only be site-admins for specific sites. Read more about admin permissions here.