Understand how permissions can change when copying groups

When you copy users from one instance of your Jira or Confluence cloud to another, we copy the groups they are in and the permissions that the groups have. We check if groups with the same names exist in your source and destination. This page explains how we copy your groups and the impact on permissions.

Copy groups with the same names

It’s possible that groups with the same names exist on both source and destination. If the groups have the same name, and the same users and permissions, then merging your groups won’t cause any issues.

However, if the groups have the same name, but different users or permissions, some users may get access to projects or products they didn’t have before copying. We’ve put together an example to help illustrate this.

Example

Jane is an admin in a company called Acme Inc that has multiple Jira Cloud instances. Because of a reorganization, Jane is asked to merge two instances of Jira Cloud – Acme-Global and Acme-Europe, by moving data from the source Acme-Europe to the destination Acme-Global.

In Acme-Europe, there is a group called Marketing (with users A, B, and X). This group has access to Jira and permission to browse a project called Alpha.

In Acme-Global, there is a group also called Marketing (with users A, B, and C) that has access to Jira and permission to browse a project called Beta.

When Jane copies the Alpha project and selects to copy users and groups separately, users A, B, and C get access to both Alpha and Beta projects after copying is complete. We’ll copy X but X won’t be added to the group and so won’t have access to the two projects.

When Jane moves the Alpha project and chooses to copy users with their groups, users A, B, C, and X will get access to both Alpha and Beta projects.

In this example, there is a mismatch in the permissions users get. User X who only had access to Project Alpha in Acme-Europe can access Project Beta after copying. Similarly, User X who did not have access to Project Alpha, can now access this project.