Jira when working with freelancers

[Sabin]

We are a very small company and we just discovered Jira. So far is looking great!

We dont work with "in house" programmers, but we hire lots of freelancencers. Is there somewhere some guides teaching how to manage JIRA when working like this?

[Florian Kollin · Accepted solution]

Hi Sabin,
you can find a good documentation about managing permissions here: 
https://confluence.atlassian.com/jira/managing-project-permissions-185729636.html

You might also want to check out user groups:
https://confluence.atlassian.com/jira/managing-groups-185729462.html

The part about the access is a bit more difficult, so you should check, if you have any restrictions running right now (can your JIRA be accessed from outside of your companies network? Should it be that way? Do your freelancers work in your office?)

Inactive users don't count against your licence. You can find more on that here:
https://confluence.atlassian.com/jirakb/how-to-get-a-list-of-active-users-counting-towards-the-jira-application-license-278695452.html

Cheers,
Florian 

[Florian Kollin]

Hi Sabin,
I don't think you'd need a special guide for that. All you have to take care of (in my opinion) is:

• security settings (which projects are they allowed to see/work in,...)
• access (do you use https? You might need to allow their IP, if they have a stable/fixed one)
• JIRA user limit (if you work with several different freelancers and you're a small company you might reach the 25 User - or whichever applies to you - limit and would need to pay more)

I hope this helps. If you have any specific questions let us know 

Cheers,
Florian 

[Sabin]

Hi Florian,

security settings (which projects are they allowed to see/work in,...)
access (do you use https? You might need to allow their IP, if they have a stable/fixed one)

For  a noob like me, it cab be hard with all those security settings, manage who can see and what can see. That's why i hopped for some more documentation /guides on this.

JIRA user limit (if you work with several different freelancers and you're a small company you might reach the 25 User - or whichever applies to you - limit and would need to pay more)

I don't yet exactly know how this work, but the JIRA prices are more than decent (for example, an deactivated user, its still counted as a user?). If we decide to use other Atlassian products, then yes, it may get expensive.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Florian beat me to it - there's no particular guide beyond "think about what you want to show external people"

[Rob Horan]

I think all you really need to do is just set all your freelancers up in a group, set permissions on a group level, and then deactivate their accounts when they're no longer associated with your organization.  Don't overthink it.