External Partner Boards

[Jimmy Kim]

I am trying to see if there is a way to create a project that can be shared externally but is a filtered view of all of issues that exist within other boards. I would like to not have to move the issues from their existing board locations to the external board.

[Trudy Claspill]

Hello @Jimmy Kim 

A "project" is a container for issues. An issue cannot exist in more than one project at a time.

A "board" is a way to view and manipulate issues that are in projects.

You can definitely create a filter that would retrieves issues from 1..n projects where those issue are displayed on any number of other boards. You can then create a board based on that filter. However, the issues displayed in that board are the same issues displayed in the original boards, so any changes made to those issues in any board will be reflected in all boards.

You can't create a "project" that is a collection of issues from other projects.

We need more information on what you mean by sharing the information "externally".

Are you trying to share it with users who don't have access to your Jira system? If not, do you intend to give them access to your Jira system?

Do the users need to be able to interact with the data (update the issues) or is it intended to be read-only?

[Jimmy Kim]

We are trying to give access to our Jira tickets to some of the external partners that we are working with. The features that we are building for these partners are at the Epic level scattered across various team projects in our internal workspace. We'd like to create a custom view for each partner that shows the progress for all applicable features for that external partner. I'm not sure if the right way to do this would be to create a new project. Ideally we'd like the users to be able to interact with the data but not necessary.

[Trudy Claspill]

Are you planning to grant the external users licensed access to your Jira instance?

If so then you can build filters to collect the issues you want to present to them in a board and then build a board based on that filter.

However, you will have to also grant them the Browse Projects permission in every project where there are issues you want them to see.

And then they will be able to see all issues in those projects, not just the ones you select with your filter. In order to prevent them from see issues that are not relevant to them in those projects, you would have to implement Issue Security in each of those projects and apply it to the issues so that each external partner could see only what they need to see.

Do you want the external partners to see only Epics, or do you want them to also see the child issues of those Epics?

If the external partners need to interact with the data, you will have to grant them additional permissions in each project from which the issues are being selected. The permissions will depend on exactly what you want to allow them to do with the issues. 

What is your definition of allowing the external partners to "see progress" on the issue that you reveal?

Creating a new project for each external partner is not necessarily an efficient way to do that. You either need to move the original issues to the new projects to make them visible to the external partners, or you have to create copies of the original issues in the new project and then set up processes to keep the originals and the copies in synch when either one changes.

There are a lot of factors to consider here, and I'm not sure that you want to reveal here all the details necessary for provide thorough recommendations and guidance on the "best" solution for you.

If you have to do this for a number of external partners, and this is going to be an ongoing need where you will be engaging with additional external partners over time, it may be worthwhile for you to consider talking to an Atlassian Solution Partner who can did into the details of your specific situation, your needs for segregating data, reporting, and so on.

You can check the Atlassian Partner Directory to find a partner serving your area.

https://partnerdirectory.atlassian.com/

Disclosure: I work for Praecipio, an Atlassian Platinum Solution Partner serving customers in North America. We would be happy to consult with you on this project.

[Jimmy Kim]

Thanks for the response. What I'm trying to do is create a Read Only view for some of our external partners that we work with so that our external partners can get visibility into the Jira tickets that are relevant to them. This view would be comprised of tickets that we'd like for them to see at the Epic, Story, Task, or Bug level. For example, for some tickets, we'd only like for the partners to see the tickets at the Epic level and not all of the tasks that are attributed to that Epic.

What I've done is create a new project workspace labeled "External Partners" and then created dedicated boards for each partner. In each board, I had only the list of tickets in a JQL query that I asked to appear in the board. Even though the tickets are appearing in these new project boards, the tickets themselves live and are maintained in different project workspaces.

A few questions here:

1. How can I share the tickets that are on each of these boards to different external partners in a read only view?

2. For the tickets that are shared on the board, as I mentioned above, I would like some to be viewed at varying levels of the ticket. Most of the time, we'd like to pretty much just share at the Epic or Bug level and not give access to all of the linked Stories and Tasks to each Epic. What is the best way to do this?

[Trudy Claspill]

Hello @Jimmy Kim 

A suggestions for a solution first requires that you answer this question:

Are you going to make the external partners licensed users of your Jira instance?

[Jimmy Kim]

Is it possible to give external partners read only access to a Jira instance without making them licensed users? If so, then no we would not prefer to make them licensed users to our Jira instances.

[Trudy Claspill]

The short answer is no, not with the natively available functionality.

You could enable Anonymous access for specified project in Jira, but that would make all the issues in those projects visible to all users of the internet. You would not be able to set up controls over the issues each external partner could see.

In order to leverage the native functionality for finer control over visibility of issues, you would have to grant the external partners licenses in your Jira system.

If you are open to sharing issues one at a time, and the external partners not having access to an agile board view, you could consider an app like this one:

Share Jira with External Users (Secure Share) 

There may be similar apps from other vendors. This is just the first one I happened to find.

You could also consider using Jira Service Management, which has the concept of a "customer" user that does not require a license. However, such users have access only through a "customer portal" UI, and only to issues in Jira Service Management project(s) where they have created the issue or it has been shared with them. If your team is using Jira Software projects, the external partners would not be able to view the issues in those Software projects. You could, potentially, use Automation for Jira to synchronize information between Software project issues and Service Management project issues to enable your external partners to indirectly see updates you make to the Software issues related to their Service Management issues. Automation for Jira does have execution limits, though, and you would have to consider how much usage would be necessary to keep the issues in synch.