We have a related extension to this (lodged as GHS-68947) where our corporate policy states that our day to day accounts (that are the JSD agents) are unable to have elevated permissions (such as JIRA system admins), so we have distinct accounts for these purposes we must switch to to allow us to change automation rules/email settings for JSD projects etc.

The elevated account should not be JSD agents, however numerous tasks in a JSD project require a JSD agent license.

Without a JSD agent license, our elevated users are able to:

• see the project/issues, but cannot respond to customer (only comment internally)
• see the project settings
• see and edit workflow settings

they ARE NOT able to:

• configure automation rules- "You need to be a Service Desk Agent to access this page. Contact your administrator if you need access." error)
• Configure email setup for a JSD project

Our standard user accounts can:

• configure automation rules

They ARE NOT able to:

• edit workflows - they can just see them

To work around this issue, we need to temporarily grant an elevated user group JSD licenses to adjust the automation rules / email config, then switch back. This is an inefficient process and use of JSD licenses.

A JIRA sysadmin should be able to configure anything on a JSD project, and only be limited from replying as an agent.

In our organisation there are 14 administrators, who are not jira-servicedesk-users, but who need to be able to behave like any other customer:

• log in to the customer portal
• create issues
• see their created issues
• comment on their issues (+ add attachments)

We do neither want nor need our administrators to be jira-servicedesk-users, as their work does not require working on tickets of the customers. They need administrative rights to do administrative work in JIRA Software, so taking away the jira-administrators group from those users is not an option either.

Further insights of my initial issue can be seen in https://support.atlassian.com/servicedesk/customer/portal/3/SDS-16638 .

We were given the workaround to use a 30days evaluation license for Jira Core, but I am afraid that this bug - regarding it´s priority - will take much longer until it is fixed.

For other specifics in the Steps To Reproduce that affect our 10+ System Admins (from a special Active Directory group in our large program):

• USE CASE: Our JIRA System Administrators are largely NOT people who we want as Agents. If one of those SysAds needs to be an agent, we'll add them as a member to a separate Active Directory group specifically made for Agents under the "JIRA Administrators" (not System) global permission
• From Application Access, only a very very small Active Directory group of Agents has be added to the "JIRA Service Desk" application as per license restrictions
• We DO NOT have this Service Desk instance running on a VM where we have also have a purchased Core license. In order for the workaround to work, we'll have to keep getting month to month Trial licenses for JIRA Core so that we can give JIRA Core Application Access to our system admins' Active Directory group so that they can use the customer portal
• The System Admin user accounts have been added to the "Service Desk Customers" role for the two projects we have for requests, yet they aren't able to access these projects from the Customer Portal to create their own requests. Every other use can.