Can I use People & Teams without Portfolio in Cloud?
Asked by Liz O'Connor:

We are using Jira \& Confluence Cloud, but we do not have Portfolio. The People feature looks perfect for us, but only if we can use the Teams field on Jira issues.

I've tried adding the Teams to field to our schemes but can't get it to display. Can we use Teams without Portfolio?

Thanks,

Liz


Answers:
author: Earl McCutcheon
body: Hello Liz,

The functionality of the team field is tied directly to the Portfolio app, for [the functionality](https://confluence.atlassian.com/jiraportfoliocloud/teams-828785268.html) tied to the field and the reporting options it provides, so you would not have the same functionality without the application that provides the added function. However some of the functionality can be mirrored natively in jira.

Mirroring the behavior of the portfolio team field can be accomplished using a **Group Picker** custom field, and again will not be the exact behavior but similar.

* but do note that the field will show all groups and does not have an option to [limit the visible groups](https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRACLOUD-61856) , this could be locked down a bit on the workflow using a "Value Field" [Optional Condition](https://confluence.atlassian.com/adminjiracloud/advanced-workflow-configuration-776636620.html#Advancedworkflowconfiguration-conditions) on the workflow to restrict transitions unless a field is set to a specific group, OR using [Post Functions](https://confluence.atlassian.com/adminjiracloud/advanced-workflow-configuration-776636620.html#Advancedworkflowconfiguration-postfunctions) to set the value to a predefined group.

The teams would effectively be managed as a group under user management and then restrict permissions on the projects permission schemes to these Team groupings so that users outside the group cannot work on the issues in the project. This would then give you the Jira Reporting options of team velocity using the project's velocity report narrowed down to this specific set of users defined on the Team Group but this does limit interaction options in the project to that team as well.

Alternatively there are other third party apps with similar functionality to portfolio that have team tracking capabilities higher on the priority of the apps base functionality, and I know that [Tempo Planner](https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/1211881/tempo-planner?hosting=cloud&tab=overview) and T[empo Timesheets](https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/6572/tempo-timesheets?hosting=cloud&tab=overview), both have different team tracking and planning options that could be more inline with what you are looking for if you are not looking so much into the issue and project level tracking and planning functionality of Portfolio, in favor of more user oriented tracking options which Tempo prioritizes.

Regards,  
Earl

comments: author: Liz O'Connor
body: Hi Earl,

This is a really helpful answer, thank you! We are already using a custom group picker field for some of our release trains.

The appeal of the Teams field is that Scrum Masters could define and maintain their own teams using the People feature, rather than relying on a Jira Admin to create a group for them. We're using the SAFe Framework so our team structure and team names can change every 3 months, so there is a bit of an overhead to setup/maintain all the groups.

We are about to enable directory sync from Azure AD to Atlassian, so I think the next step will be to have the concept of a Team live in M365. That way people can create/maintain their team groups in M365 and still have them available to use in Jira in our custom group picker field.

Cheers,

Liz


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