Can individual users opt in to the new navigation without admins turning on preview?

[Alvin Rodis]

Hello - I'm looking for clarity based upon THIS article. We have a Premium subscription to Jira and JSM and Standard for Confluence. Prior to the rollout of the new navigation by Atlassian, can individual users enable the new navigation to test for themselves?

I realize that as an admin I can turn it on for the entire instance, but I am not looking to do that at the moment. In working on our rollout comms plan we want to have users enable it for themselves if they'd like without turning it on for the entire instance.

Bottom line...can users enable the new navigation for themselves (Jira/JSM/Confluence) prior to the Atlassian rollout without the admin turning it on for the instance? Thank you!

[Martin Flury]

very simple, NO.
Only Admin can turn it on for themselves.

Normal user do not have access to the new navigation.

You could take some key users in the admin group temporary, but I'd be very careful with that!

[Alvin Rodis]

@Martin Flury  - thank you

[Gregg Brown]

Admin can turn it on for themselves or for everyone. When turning it on for everyone, any user can turn it off temporarily until the scheduled rollout time for that instance occurs—at which time it will be turned on for everyone who had turned it off.

Have you considered using your sandbox environment to turn it on in so that anyone can play around with it without it affecting production environment?

[Alvin Rodis]

@Gregg Brown - thank you

[Tosha Liveoak]

Hi, @Alvin Rodis , Unfortunately, only admins can turn on for themselves or for all users in the instance. That's consistent with Jira, JSM, Confluence, Atlassian Home, and Jira Product Discovery. Once you turn it on for your whole instance, individual users can turn it back off temporarily until Atlassian forces the new nav.

[Alvin Rodis]

@Tosha Liveoak - thank you.

[Mark B Wager]

Hi Alvin

Currently, in my sandbox testing, when I turn it on for all users, it defaults to ON for everyone (i.e., turning it ON) with an ability for users to toggle it OFF. This is fine for the sandbox I suppose, but NOT good in production. I'm asking that Atlassian lets users Opt IN at their own pace. 

Many of us seem to agree, we want a SOFT LAUNCH giving our users time for communication and opt-in. We want them to try it —> but by giving them the control to turn it ON (and Off) themselves for their own testing. 

I'm advocating for setting the initial individual DEFAULT to OFF when the "Enable for Everyone" button is clicked. (Essentially turning on the ABILITY to Opt-IN, but not forcing it on them at first.)

Hope this helps.

Mark

[Alvin Rodis]

thank you

[Gregg Brown]

That sounds like an administrative nightmare. As an admin, I want to know what experience my users are on so I don't have to have another layer to solving their issues. And I want control of that, not them. The sandbox is there for them to get used to it at their own pace before I turn it on for them in production. Email communications and office hour meetings/demos are provided for them to attend prior to it going live in production. If they aren't ready by time the rest of the org is ready for it, then tough luck. I'm not going to try to assist my users in a situation where half of them are on one experience and the other half aren't because they didn't want to accept change. 

[Darryl Lee]

Alas @Alvin Rodis the answer is currently NO. I asked the PM why over here.

I made this request way back in March. I see that @Dominik Březina, @Brad Hosking, @Mark B Wager , and @Ariel Kauan asked for it since "opt-in" was announced.

Asking @Aditi Dalal, @Brett Uglow and @Varsha Patel here if there's some technical reason that they couldn't enable opt-in for EVERYONE, not just Admins.

Because if Atlassian can enable Admins to individually turn on the new nav for themselves, then it seems like the pieces are there to let Users also do this.

The only response I ever got about this seemed to misunderstand what we were asking for:

Based on our research with admins from late 2024 to early 2025, we found that managing bespoke workflows at the user level becomes increasingly challenging for admins of the organization. To address this, we're giving admins control over whether to move their users to the new navigation starting in mid-April 2025 before we enforce the transition as per our rollout.

To clarify. We don't want the control to force the UI on our users. We want to put that control in the hands of our users. As it was done (very sucessfully) in 2020:

https://community.atlassian.com/forums/Jira-articles/A-better-navigation-for-Jira-Cloud-is-coming-soon-available-now/ba-p/1216077

Specifically this comment from @Dennis Walsh :

I appreciate the statement that "We are also putting you in control of this change. Once your instance receives the new navigation, each of your users will be able to switch over to the new navigation on their own timeframe."  These changes look promising, but users still like to at least feel like they're in charge of their environment.

This is much better than the "just get used to it" approach used by certain "other" software companies (which shall remain nameless) who simply force-feed all of their "enhancements" on their users in one swoop, leaving the users either powerless to undo things, or -best case- forced to flail about and try to figure out on their own how to get their interface back to the way they want it.

[Alvin Rodis]

Thank you for this info

[yqiao]

Hey in case people don't know how to bring the Navigation back to the old version:

1. Go to Settings menu on the top navigation
2. Click General Settings
3. Scroll down and head to the Jira Lab section, we will see a toggle like

[Darryl Lee]

Hi @yqiao - while you are correct that users (if they are on Standard, Premium, or Enterprise plans for Jira) can revert to the old version of Navigation, it's important that they know that they can only do so temporarily. As the official timeline says:

Standard plan

For Jira and Atlassian Home, users can still turn off the new navigation only for themselves till the end of May 2025. This will not affect anyone else on the site.

Premium and Enterprise plan

For Jira and Atlassian Home, users can still turn off the new navigation only for themselves till the end of July 2025. This will not affect anyone else on the site.

And that by the End of July 2025:

All users of all plans are on the new navigation with no ability to turn it off.