How to use space roles

Instead of explicitly-defining users, Jira admins can assign qualities in a scheme to roles within a space. These roles can later be defined by the Space admin at their discretion, allowing Jira admins to use the same scheme for multiple spaces without sacrificing granularity or constantly updating schemes. In more practical terms, this empowers those working in a space to delegate responsibilities and permissions without requiring the intervention of Jira admins.

In Jira, these placeholders are called Space roles, and they can be used to:

• grant permissions in permissions schemes

• set up email notification schemes

• set up work item security levels

• trigger workflow conditions

• grant access to filters and dashboards

Jira admins can create space roles to match how their organization works, or grant permissions to users selected in a field, such as:

• the Assignee field (also called Current assignee)

• the Reporter field

• any Group by field

• any User select field

Any users who appear in that field (or are in the groups that appear in that field) are granted this permission. More about the roles that come with Jira Cloud and the roles that come with Jira Service Management.

How space roles simplify permissions management

For example, let’s say that you – the Jira admin – want to restrict the ability to create new sprints to a specific user in a space that shares a permission scheme with other spaces. If you explicitly assign a user to this permission in your scheme:

• users with the Manage sprints permission would be able to do so in all spaces that use the scheme or

• you would need to use a different scheme for each space to limit access

In both situations, changing who can manage sprints requires a Jira admin.

Space roles allow for more flexibility within these shared structures. Instead of nominating specific users, you can create a space role called Lead Developer, then grant it the Manage sprints permission in your scheme.

In each space that uses this scheme, the Space admin can nominate whoever they want to the Lead Developer role, granting them the Manage sprints permission – but only in that space. In this way, your permission scheme grans access to users in different spaces without a Jira admin intervening.