New users can be added to Jira in a number of ways:
- Direct creation by the Jira administrator
- Invitation from the Jira administrator to create an account
- By signing up for an account if the public signup option is enabled
- Synchronization of user accounts from an external user repository, such as LDAP
The first and second options have centralized management, where only the Jira administrators can create and maintain user accounts. This option is applicable to the most private Jira instances designed to be used by an organization's internal users.
The third option allows users to sign up for accounts by themselves. This is most useful when you run a public Jira instance, where manually creating user accounts is not scalable enough to handle the volume. We will be looking at how to enable public signup options in later sections in this chapter. For now, we will examine how administrators can create user accounts manually:
- Browse to the User Browser page.
- Click on the Create user button.
- Enter a unique username for the new user. Jira will let you know if the username is already taken.
- Enter the password, full name, and email address of the user. If you do not enter a password, a random password will be generated. In this case, you should select the Send notification email option so that the new user can reset their password.
- Select which applications in Jira the new user will have access to. For example, if you are running Jira software, you should check the Jira Software option. Doing so will consume one license seat count.
- Click on the Create user button to create the new user.
Alternatively, the administrator can also choose to invite users so that they can create their accounts themselves. This is different than the public signup option, since only recipients of invitations will be able to create accounts. For this feature to work, you will need to have an outgoing mail server configured, as invitations will be sent as emails. Perform the following steps to invite users to sign up:
- Browse to the User Browser page.
- Click on the Invite users button.
- Specify the email addresses for the people you wish to invite. You can invite multiple people at once.
- Click on the Invite users button to send out the invitations.