Why do roles that are not in the permission scheme assigned to my project show up in the Project Administration > Roles tab?

[Jeff Guthrie]

This can make it confusing for new project admins using jira. I did some searching in jira.atlassian.com but didnt find a bug for this so not sure if it is 'by design' or not...

[Zul NS _Atlassian_ · Accepted solution]

I believe it is by design, from the following quote found in here.

Once a new project role is created, it is available to all projects.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Yes, it is by design - it does two things. Allows the users to a) see that the role is not in use and b) start adding users to it

[Jeff Guthrie]

Ya it does let them see it is there but if the role isnt in the permission scheme, when they add users to it, those users wont have the permissions of that role...

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

But there are no permissions for that role, as you've just said.

I can see what you're getting at though - your project admins don't know whether a role is useful in your project. There's no real answer here other than "document it". Write up what permission schemes and workflows use what roles and then embed a link to that document in the role description.