User management differences in Cloud and Server

There are a few fundamental differences to understand between Server, Data Center and Cloud:

• for Server, Crowd Server can act as your remote directory (similar to AD) and allows you to provide SSO across multiple Atlassian Server products

• for Data Center, Crowd Data Center can also act as your remote directory (similar to AD). You can also use Crowd's SSO or connect your Data Center products directly to an external identity provider.

• for Cloud, users can use a single Atlassian account to log in to all Cloud apps. You can then connect Atlassian accounts to an external IdP with SAML SSO and user provisioning (SCIM) via a subscription to Atlassian Access.

Server and Data Center user management

By default, users have a different account for each one of your company's Atlassian Server products (although often peoples' usernames and passwords are the same across products). Alternatively, you can use Atlassian Crowd to provide single sign on between multiple Server products.

For each Server product, you can manage users and groups from the product's internal directory, an Active Directory or LDAP server. With Atlassian's Data Center products, you can delegate authentication to a third-party provider via SSO. 

Changes to your Cloud organization

We’ve been rolling out changes that may affect your migration experience. From your organization at admin.atlassian.com, if the Users list and Groups list are under the Directory tab, you have the improved user management experience. This means that the users and groups across sites will be merged under the organization. Read more about how groups and permissions are migrated. If you have any concerns, contact support.

Cloud user management

With our Cloud products, you can create an organization and verify your domains, which will give you a centralized view of all users at your company, across all our products. From there, you can subscribe to Atlassian Access to configure SAML SSO with an identity provider like Okta, Azure AD, Active Directory Federated services, Google Cloud, or more.

Learn more on the following pages:

• Verify your domains

• Configure SAML SSO

User provisioning allows you to sync users and groups from those identity providers to your Atlassian Cloud products. If you're using an on-premises LDAP directory or Active Directory, all of our supported identity providers offer connectors to those local directories. Learn more about user provisioning

Cloud accounts

In Cloud, each user has a single Atlassian account tied to their email address that they can use to access any Atlassian Cloud product (including any Jira or Confluence Cloud site). When you invite users to your Jira or Confluence site, they'll get access to the products you specify, either with an already existing Atlassian account or by creating one. Learn more about Atlassian accounts

Individual users own their accounts by default. If you want more control over their accounts, verify that you own the domain with their email address to claim their accounts, which transfers ownership of the account from individual users to the organization that has claimed the domain. This gives company admins the ability to modify, deactivate, and delete their accounts.

Site administrators can control which Atlassian accounts have access to the individual products on that site, but cannot modify the accounts themselves.

Organization admins that have a verified domain have full control over the accounts of users in their company, across all sites and services. Building on this, you can subscribe to Atlassian Access and configure user provisioning and SAML single sign-on with your identity provider and an external directory if you have one.

More information and support

We have a number of channels available to help you with your migration:

• for migration planning information visit the Atlassian Migration Program website

• for technical issues or support with strategy and best practices, get in touch with our support team

• for peer advice, ask the Atlassian Community

• for expert guidance, work with an Atlassian Partner

Support for Atlassian Server products ends in February, 2024. Learn more about the Server end of support timeline.