difference between Product roles and Project roles

[jeroen_wilmes]

I want to give someone a "customer" role in one of our projects.

In a customer role you have less permissions than in a "user" role.

When I check with the site admin, he showed me that the person has the "user" product role. 

I assume that this is on license level and that the role on the project defines the permissions of the person that is allocated to that project role? Is my understanding correct?

[Walter Buggenhout · Accepted solution]

Hi @jeroen_wilmes,

Yes, that is very much how it is intended. In an attempt to clarify a bit further: Atlassian ships its products with a couple of out-of-the-box roles. At product level, these grant a user a license to use an Atlassian product and - optionally - some additional super powers. A user is licensed to use the product, while a product admin will be able to administer its settings.

On top of that, Jira also has project roles. There's a (project) administrator role e.g. or - when you have JSM installed - the customer and service desk team roles that grant a specific set of permissions inside a project via the project's permission scheme. However, you can define as many roles as you want by simply adding them to Jira Settings > System > Project Roles. If you feel like you need an Analyst, QA Tester, Approver, Supplier, HR, ... or anything else, you can just add them to the list. You can then define the desired permissions for that role by assigning project level permissions to that role as you see fit.

Hope this helps! 

[jeroen_wilmes]

Thanks for this clarification, that helps a lot.