What is the difference between portal customers and then a user who is given JSM - customer access?
Asked by Fahad Akhtar:

Hi,

I'm a site admin. I have been inviting customers for a while now and when I invite them I ensure that they have Site Access and ensure that Jira Service Management - Customer is enabled while the Agent option is not. I only want my customers to have access to the portal not the actual Jira instance. But I also see when I go to Atlassian Administration and select Jira Service Management on the left hand side it brings me to a page in which the top reads "Portal-only Customers". The customers I have listed under the users group are not shown on the "Portal-only Customers" page. Why is that? How would these customers listed on the Portal-only Customers page gain access to the portal? These portal-only customers were around only after I came in as Site Admin.

Thansk,  
Fahad


Answers:
author: Mikael Sandberg
body: The difference between portal-only customers and users that you give JSM - Customer license to is that portal-only customers are usually external users that is not managed and they cannot log in on your site's root URL, they must use the portal's specific URL. Users that you set up from admin.atlassian.com counts toward your Atlassian Access license (if you use that) and can be assigned access to other Atlassian products if needed.

You can learn more about the differences in [this KB](https://support.atlassian.com/user-management/docs/manage-jira-service-management-customer-accounts/#Which-account-is-best-for-my-customers).

comments: author: Fahad Akhtar
body: But I have customers in which they are not listed under portal only customers. Under their account the Jira Service Management - Customer option is enabled while the agent one is not. This means they do not use up a license. I know that already. All I want to know is why are the customers under the Users page not found on the page listing Portal-Only customers even though these customers only have access to the portal? What are the differences between the two? The first picture is a screenshot for the a customer's details under the User's page. The second picture is a screenshot showing that when I search for that user using their name on the Portal-Only customers page he does not show up. Why is that?

![Customer_Site_Access_Details.PNG](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/296490iA734BB0FBD35A7DB/image-size/large?v=v2&px=999 "Customer_Site_Access_Details.PNG")![Portal_Only_Customers_Page.PNG](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/296491i68098D7F7DF31C57/image-size/large?v=v2&px=999 "Portal_Only_Customers_Page.PNG")


author: Mikael Sandberg
body: So customer that are listed under admin.atlassian.com \> Users have more permissions then portal-only customers. You could enable other licenses to them, which cannot be done to portal-only customers. It also means that they could go to your site's root URL and also go to start.atlassian.com to log on to your site. Portal-only customer cannot do this, they have to go to the portal specific URL. And if you are using Atlassian Access in order to do SSO/SAML customers that are JSM - Customer counts towards your Access license while portal-only customers do not.


author: Mikael Sandberg
body: If you check out the KB it will go more into details about this, and there are also recommendation when you should set up your customers as portal-only or add them as a site user and give them JSM - Customer access.


author: Joseph Chung Yin
body: [@Fahad Akhtar](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/3558740) -

I agreed with [@Mikael Sandberg](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/853579) stated. Again, customers only have access via the portal UI against your JSM project(s). They will not have access to your Jira Software application project(s) unless they are granted with actual Jira Software Application product licenses.

Hope this also helps.

Best, Joseph Chung Yin

Jira/JSM Functional Lead, Global Technology Applications Team

Viasat Inc.


Tags: cloud

jira-service-management

jira-service-management-cloud