Bulk update user information in Jira server

Summary

Solution

Goal

Modify users information for a large amount of users in JIRA

Information may be:

• userFullName

• userEmail

• newUserId (on JIRA 6.1+, not applicable for JIRA Cloud)

• activate or deactivate (not applicable for JIRA Cloud)

Problem:

There is no built in method for admins to update large amount of users on one go in JIRA or the Cloud User Management.

Database access is restricted on Atlassian Cloud making manual changes to the users information only possible through the User Management.

Workaround

Use the JIRA Command Line Interface created by Bob Swift to update users using a text file.

Solution Example:

Steps to bulk update email addresses: (to update different information, modify the list on step 3 and the parameter name 'userEmail' on step 4)

1. Get the JIRA Command Line Interface by following the Installation and Use guide.

2. Test the CLI connection: (replacing SERVER, USER and PASSWORD with your instance URL and administrator user details)

   1 ./jira.sh --server https://SERVER --user USER --password PASSWORD --action getServerInfo

3. Generate a file with the information to be changed for each user and place it inside the CLI folder where the jira.sh executable is.

   for example:

   data.txt

   1 2 user email@email.com otheruser email2@email.com

4. Bulk update the emails:

   1 cat data.txt | xargs -n 2 sh -c './jira.sh --server https://SERVER --user USER --password PASSWORD --action updateUser --userId $0 --userEmail $1'

Other Solutions

You may want to be interested in alternative bulk update solution using JIRA REST API:

• Update username and email using REST API or the database