Manage customer access to your channels

You can control who can access your support channels and resources by managing customer and organization access for each customer experience. This flexibility lets you offer tailored support to specific customer groups.

Add customers and organizations to your site

Before you can give someone access to a customer experience, you need to add them as a customer on your site. You can add individual customers or import customers in bulk.

If you want to restrict access to your support channels to certain customers, you’ll also need to create organization profiles and add customers to the relevant organizations. Read more about restricting access to a customer experience.

Account types

Customers can have one of two account types in Customer Service Management: Customer accounts (also known as Portal-only accounts), or Atlassian accounts.

Customer accounts

This is the most common customer account type in Customer Service Management. These accounts are dedicated exclusively to external customers, allowing them to access support channels and raise requests without accessing any internal Atlassian apps.

Atlassian Accounts

Customers with this account type are typically employees, contractors, or trusted partners who already use Atlassian apps or need their access managed through your company’s single sign-on (SSO).

To be a customer, someone with an Atlassian account must have the Customer role for Customer Service Management. Atlassian accounts with any admin role, or the Customer Service Team role cannot be customers. Atlassian accounts with any roles for other apps can be customers.

When adding people with existing Atlassian accounts as customers in Customer Service Management, the Customer role is automatically added to their existing account. They will not be granted a new portal-only account.

Access options

In your customer experience you can choose to make your channels open to anyone or to restrict access to specific organizations.

Restricting access

Restricting access ensures only customers in the organizations you’ve added can access your support website or email you for help. This is useful if you have different experiences for different customer groups, such as separating general customers from partners.

These organization-based access rules also apply to eligible Atlassian-account customers. The CSM Customer role alone does not grant access to an organization-restricted customer experience.

Open access

If you choose to give access to anyone, it will mean anyone with the link to your support website, or your support email can get support. When this option is selected, customers can:

• view and search for support content on your website

• get instant help from your AI agent

• raise requests through a contact form

  • At this time, we aren’t supporting attachments from non-logged in submissions

Choose customers for a customer experience

To choose customers for a customer experience:

1. In your customer experience, select Customer access from the sidebar.

2. Select whether you want to give access to Only customers from organizations that have been added or to Anyone.

3. If you choose Only customers from organizations that have been added:

   1. Select Add organizations.

   2. Search for and select the organizations you want to add.

   3. Select Add.

Account creation settings

You can control how customers get access to your support channels across all of your customer experiences. You can:

• restrict Customer-account creation to specific email domains. These restrictions are separate from the Approved domains rules for Atlassian-account signup described below.

• choose whether customers can create their own accounts or require an invitation from an agent or admin

• allow customers to access your support website and send requests without logging in

To change account creation settings:

1. Select Settings, then Jira apps.

2. Under Customer Service Management, select Customer access.

3. Choose the settings you want.

4. Select Save.

How account types are assigned

A customer receives an Atlassian account or a Customer account (portal-only) based on three criteria:

1. Their email domain on self-signup:
   When a customer signs up or raises a request, the system checks domain settings in the following order:

• Approved domain for Atlassian accounts: If their email domain matches an approved domain rule in Atlassian Administration with the Customer Service Management Customer role, they automatically receive an Atlassian account.

• Allowed domain for Customer accounts: If their domain does not match an Atlassian account rule, the system checks your customer access settings. If customer accounts are restricted to specific domains, users from those allowed domains receive a Customer account.

• Open self-signup: If customer account creation is open to any domain, they receive a Customer account.

2. How an admin adds them:

• If they already have an Atlassian account, adding them as a customer in Customer Service Management reuses that account and assigns the Customer role.

• If they do not have an Atlassian account and are added directly in Customer Service Management, a Customer account is created.

3. Where they are managed in Atlassian Administration:

• Atlassian accounts: Select Directory, then Users.

• Customer accounts: Select Apps, then Sites, then your site name, then Service Collection, then Portal-only customers.

You can also provision and sync users for both account types from identity providers.

Control external customer access across Service Collection apps

Organization admins can control whether external customers – those without Atlassian accounts in your organization – can access both Customer Service Management support websites and Jira Service Management help centers, or only Customer Service Management support websites.

This can be configured in Atlassian admin:

1. In Atlassian Administration, select Apps.

2. Select Sites, then choose the site you want to apply the setting to.

3. Select Service Collection, then Portal-only customers.

4. Enable or disable the Allow portal-only customers to get support in Jira Service Management toggle.

When the toggle is on, external customer accounts are shared between both apps. This means external customers can access support channels across Customer Service Management and Jira Service Management.

When the toggle is off, external customers are restricted to Customer Service Management only. They will not be able to access Jira Service Management help centers. This toggle applies to Customer accounts. It does not control whether an Atlassian account can be a customer in Customer Service Management, and it does not assign the Customer role.