What is a unit?
This feature is currently in beta and is gradually rolling out. It may not be available to all organizations at this time.
Who can do this? Role: Organization admin Atlassian Cloud: Enterprise plan Atlassian Government Cloud: Available |
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Units are an Enterprise feature in Atlassian Administration that create defined boundaries designed to keep collaboration secure, protect sensitive data, and delegate administration safely without governance bottlenecks. A unit groups users and apps within your organization into a collaboration boundary. Use units when teams need separate working contexts or delegated administration.
By setting up units, you can:
Keep data within a collaboration boundary: Users, agents and AI within your organization don't have access to data from other units. They can find and collaborate with the right people. A unit contains a user directory, and instance of the Teamwork Graph that powers Rovo experiences and the apps and data your users use to collaborate on and move work forward.
Delegate administration safely: Organization admins can assign unit-level admin permissions without granting organization-wide access. Understand the role of unit admin
For example, a large organization might create units for specific client accounts, regional operations, or subsidiaries to ensure data is partitioned appropriately.
To get the most value, use units to ensure information flows where it's needed. When to create a unit
How units fit into your organization
In Atlassian cloud, units sit between your organization and sites and apps, allowing for a more granular way to manage large enterprises.
Imagine your organization as the top-level container. Inside that container, you can create multiple units. Each unit then contains one or more sites, which host your Atlassian apps or collections.
What units do
Each unit contains:
a user directory
an instance of the Teamwork Graph
Rovo (if enabled for your organization)
a set of Atlassian platform apps (such as Studio, Home, Project, Goals, Teams), and alongside other Atlassian apps and collections
Within a unit, the Teamwork Graph connects supported apps and experiences. This ensures users can easily find and share knowledge relevant within the unit, such as a Confluence page and project contacts. App admins can apply additional permissions to set more granular access to pages, work items, projects, and spaces in the unit. Prepare to set up units in your organization
Rovo experiences including Rovo Search, Rovo Chat, and Rovo agents operate within the unit boundary, ensuring that sensitive information stays within within the unit boundary. Your teams get relevant search results, refined answers, and app experiences that reflect their universe. Information from one unit will not appear in search results or Rovo answers for users in a different unit.
You can also conditionally provision only the right users and groups from your identity provider to specific units in your Atlassian organization using user provisioning allocation policies. Allocate users and groups to units
How is a unit different from app-level permission?
Units do not replace or remove app-level permissions. It’s a collaboration boundary that prevents accidental data connections across separate business areas. For example, if a user has access to a Jira work item in Unit A and a Confluence page in Unit B, units prevent them from linking these two apps, even though they have individual permissions for both.
When to use units
A key question to answer is whether you need to keep users and data separate between teams?
✅ Need to separate people and data | ❌ Don’t need to separate people and data |
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Use units as your boundary. Units create user directories, ensuring teams cannot see or access each other's information. | Use sites as your boundary. Sites let users collaborate freely within a unit while keeping project data separate. You can delegate app management while maintaining a shared collaboration environment within the unit. |
Units are most effective when you need to separate specific groups of users or data. We recommend using units for:
Subsidiaries or business units: When different parts of your company need to operate independently.
Regional operations: To manage users and data based on geographic or regulatory requirements.
External engagements: To keep data and users separated from your internal teams when collaborating on projects with external users, such as client facing projects.
Sensitive projects: For sensitive projects or IP, where partitioning the user directory (such as finance, human resources) is essential.
Not sure if units are right for your organization? Contact your Atlassian account team, an Atlassian solution partner, or our Atlassian support team to discuss your specific needs.
Difference between units and Atlassian Isolated Cloud
Units separate users, apps, and data within an organization, whether that organization is on Atlassian cloud, Atlassian Isolated Cloud, or Atlassian Government Cloud.
During the open beta, units are available only on Atlassian Commercial Cloud. Support for Atlassian Isolated Cloud and Atlassian Government Cloud is planned for future releases, so organizations can configure boundaries within the environment that best fit their security requirements.
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