Difference between Service Desk Customer - Portal Access and Service desk customer role?

[Sofia Grunspan]

Can anyone tell me what is the difference between Service Desk Customer - Portal Access and Service desk customer role? I'm new using Jira Service Desk (server)

Thanks in advance

[Jack Brickey · Accepted solution]

JSD Customers are limited to Portal access they do not have access to the application UI like Jira users. The service desk customer role is just a means of specifying the users as customers. Where exactly are you viewing these nomenclatures?

[Sofia Grunspan]

Yes! that's what I needed. Thanks!

[Mark Winston]

I'm still confused.  Why would you even have a role for customers within jira since customers don't get access to Jira.  They just get access to the portal.  Is this for the use case where you may give a customer access to jira? 

I find that anyone with an @mycompany.com  email address that is given customer portal access, but doesn't have jira access, is put in this role automatically.  I'm not sure why that is as it doesn't make any sense.  I'm wondering if this is a bug.