Changing an account from managed to unmanaged

[Deleted user]

Hi community,

does someone know, if its possible to change a managed account (company) into an unmanaged account (private)? For example by changing the email adress? Are there other ways? What are the impacts on the accounts actions, achievements, products (if the private one is only a free account) etc.?

I`m thankful for any kind of help.

Greetings,

Michael

[Petter Gonçalves · Accepted solution]

Hello @[deleted]

Welcome to the Atlassian Community!

Per your description, I understand you would like to know how you can change the e-mail address from your managed accounts to an unmanaged domain and the consequences of this approach. Is that correct?

As described in this documentation, these would be the steps to change the e-mail address of a managed account:

1. From your organization at admin.atlassian.com, select Directory > Managed accounts.

2. Next to an individual account, click Show details to open the managed account’s page.

3. From the Email address field, enter the updated email address and click the checkmark.

4. We’ll email the user to verify the change. Until then, you’ll continue to manage this account with the original email address.

About the consequences:

1. If the new email address selected has a domain you haven’t verified, we’ll remove these accounts from your organization, although they can still access your site if you allow unmanaged accounts to do that. 
2. Any Atlassian Access security policies will no longer apply after the user verifies the change.
3. Once the user is properly configured to access the site, all their product settings (Permissions, Issues assigned, etc) will be kept.

Let us know if you have any other questions.

[Michael Schultheis]

Hi @Petter Gonçalves

thank you so much for your fast reply! Your description really helps me. I had suspected a few things, but it's nice to have some clarity now. Still, for me there are two questions open about the consequences:

• First, what exactly happens to the user and his activities? Let's say an employee leaves the company (managed), but has been very active in the community and may have even taken the opportunity to do some training (badges). Does he lose all of these entries? What happens zu the discussions he or she may have started (community)? Is a free variant account (unmanaged) created for him automatically?
• Second, is there a way to combine the activities and achievements of an company account (managed) with those of an existing private free account (unmanaged)?

As you can see, for me it's all about how new employees - who already know JIRA - can slip into a companies system with all their achievements and how employees can leave the company without losing everything.

Greetings from Cologne!

[Petter Gonçalves]

Hello @Michael Schultheis

I'm glad to know the information provided has helped you. :)

About your new questions, I have the following information:

First, what exactly happens to the user and his activities? Let's say an employee leaves the company (managed), but has been very active in the community and may have even taken the opportunity to do some training (badges). Does he lose all of these entries? What happens zu the discussions he or she may have started (community)? Is a free variant account (unmanaged) created for him automatically?

If you change an account with a managed e-mail address to an unmanaged e-mail address in Community, all the data will be kept with no changes, including the badges, articles, discussions, and questions the user have answered so far.

That being said, the only changes applied when changing the e-mail address (Managed or not) are related to your personal instance where the e-mail is verified and the Access security policies. Any related content in the community will not be changed.

Second, is there a way to combine the activities and achievements of an company account (managed) with those of an existing private free account (unmanaged)?

Unfortunately, it is not possible to merge two different Atlassian Accounts. We have a feature request created to allow this possibility in the future:

Ability to merge Atlassian accounts to a single account with secondary emails 

Feel free to vote and watch the suggestion to increase its priority and also receive notifications about any updates.

In fact, when a co-worker is replaced by another one and its current content in Community is linked to an account managed by you, you can choose one of the options below:

1. Change his account to an unmanaged one. He will be able to keep all his content of Community in the new account
2. Change his account e-mail address to the managed account of the new co-worker. This will allow your new co-worker to start with all the previous badges acquired before

Greetings from Brazil! :)

[Michael Schultheis]

Hi Petter,

sorry for the late reply. Thanks for all the information! I will follow up on the request ;).

Kind regards,

Michael

[Andreas Küffner]

Hello @Petter Gonçalves

I had have the same issue and want to change a users email address from a managed domain to a non-company email adress. I understand that with that step the user's account is not longer a managed account. I went through your explanation but when I enter the new email address I get this message:

"You can't change a managed account's email address to a different domain that's not managed by your organization."

(translated from German)

The standard for our Atlassian/Confluence account is that users use a different email address. So it's not an issue with the permission of being a unmanaged user in the first place.

Your help would be much appreciated.

Best regards

Andreas

[S Naveen Kumar]

Hi @Andreas Küffner ,

Unfortunately, the above steps might not work now as we have a recent change that came in as per documentation last year. In mid-Jan to mid-Feb there was a roll out about updating email addresses. Before, you could update a managed account's email address to an email of an unverified domain. Now, you can only update an email with a domain you've verified.

Since the change is rolling out over time, you might still be able to update an email address to an unverified domain. If so, we'll email the user to verify the update.

We also have an ongoing Feature request for the same in which you may vote and comment on the requirements and the urgency to gain traction from the product team.