What are the recommended techniques for switching a user from one Jira project role to another?

[Muddu]

Greetings Experts!

I have a requirement from my client using Jira where they need to move their users from the current "Meccano" role to a new "Lego" role for a specific project. The reason for this change is that during an assessment of the permission scheme, it was identified that the "Meccano" role had more permissions than necessary and the name of the role does not meet the client's standards.

Can you please advise on the best practices for the following:

i) What are the necessary steps to create a new role "Lego" with the appropriate permissions while retaining the same workflow as the "Meccano" role?

ii) What are the ways to test the new role before executing the role switch?

iii) What are the steps to follow to execute the role switch?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Accepted solution]

Log in as an admin, then

• Create a new role
• Edit the permissions scheme(s) to use the new role
• Possibly edit the permissions scheme(s) to remove the old role
• Add a test user to the role

Then, with the test user, log in and test what they can now do in the project(s)

[Muddu]

@Nic Brough -Adaptavist- Thank you for sharing your Tips here. 

[Trudy Claspill · Accepted solution]

Hello @Muddu 

Are you working with a Team Managed project or a Company Managed project? That information will show at the bottom of the navigation panel on the left when you are viewing the project.

Are you working with a Software project, Service Project, or Work Management project?

i).a: Workflows apply to issue types, not roles. However if there are Conditions or Validators defined in the issues workflows which make use of Project Roles, the workflows will need to be update to include the new Role where the old Role was used.

i).b: The process for creating a Project role is defined here for a Company Managed project and here for a Team Managed project.

i).c: To allocate the appropriate permissions to the new role for a Team Managed project, permission allocation is completed when you define the Role. For a Company Managed project you may need to update the Permission Scheme assigned to the project, if Permissions are granted to Project Roles in the scheme. As I mentioned in i).a you may also need to update the Workflows in the Workflow Scheme associated with the project. And given that Notifications may also be assigned to Project Roles, you may also need to update the Notification Scheme. You will also want to examine an Automation Rules that are being run against the project to see if they make use of Project Roles, and determine if those need to be updated with the new role.

ii) To fully test this you should implement the changes in a replica test environment where you can then freely create new issues, transition the issues, execute events that would send notifications and trigger Automation Rules - test anything that may have been impacted by the changes. If you can't create a replica test environment, then I would recommend you set up a separate/new Project that uses copies of all the schemes used by the original project. Make changes to the copied schemes and execute activities in that separate project to test the changes. 

iii) When your testing is complete, implement the changes in the production project/instance. I recommend you do this during a low usage time for that project to minimize disruptions.

[Muddu]

Thank you @Trudy Claspill for the detailed explanation.

I missed to mention that we are working on a "Company Managed Project". I will follow your instructions and design our approach accordingly. 

[Muddu]

@Trudy Claspill & @Nic Brough -Adaptavist- 

We are working on "Company Managed Project" and it's a "Software Project".

There will be a difference of just few permissions defined in "Issue Permissions" and "Project Permissions" between the New Project Role and the Old Project Role.

Nothing changes apart from this.

My Questions is, What is the best way to create a New Role that is similar to the Old Role just shy of few permissions? Can we clone the Old Role to New Role and remove few of the Issue Permissions and Project Permissions.? Reason being, I believe I should not be worried about workflow scheme and notification scheme. I just need to take care of few Automation scripts to ensure appropriate role name is used.    

[Trudy Claspill]

The steps for creating a new Project Role for use in Company Managed projects is detailed here:

https://support.atlassian.com/jira-cloud-administration/docs/manage-project-roles/#Adding-a-project-role

That process simply creates a Role. How that role is actually used (permissions allocated, notifications, etc.) is defined elsewhere in the Schemes for those entities.

There is no option to copy an existing Project Role. You simply must create it, and then for the projects where you want to use it you will have to manually go through the steps of updating schemes, rules, etc., and assigning users to that role in the project.