User Roles and Permissions

Permission management in ActivityTimeline is done through User Roles which are separate from Jira permission schemes and govern visibility and actions of the users of ActivityTimeline.

There are 3 ‘Power roles’: Admin, Manager, and Team Lead which allow to create and manage teams, generate reports and timesheets, and assign/approve vacations/sick leaves, etc., and 3 ‘Employee’ roles that are assigned to the majority of the users in the organization.

Permission management in ActivityTimeline is done through User Roles which are separate from Jira permission schemes and govern the visibility and actions of the users of ActivityTimeline.

There are 4 ‘Power roles’: Admin, Manager, Team Lead, and Power Team Lead allow generating reports and timesheets and assigning/approving vacations/sick leaves, etc., and 3 ‘Employee’ roles that are assigned to the majority of the users in the organization.

Role	Recommended for	Access to Configuration	Access to Modules	Additional permissions
Administrator	Jira admins C-level managers	Full access to configurations.	Full access to all modules and all teams: Plan, Work, Track, Report	Access the Setup Wizard or refresh users, issues, boards, filters, or projects from Jira.
Manager	Global managers (have access to all teams) Department leads Project Managers Team leaders	Access to Team management settings. He/she can edit members of existing teams and create new teams. Access to User management settings (Users, User Skills, and Users Positions, Resources, Workload Schemes, Groups (read-only in Groups page)	Full access to all modules and all teams: Plan, Work, Track, Report	See all issues from activated projects in ActivityTimeline unless issue security is set up. All actions performed by ‘Employee’-roles.
Power Team Lead	Project Managers Team Leaders Scrum Masters	No access	Plan: All teams Work: Own and users from the team he manages Track: Own and users from the team he manages Report: All teams (if the report includes worklogs, then can see only the teams he manages)	See all issues from activated projects in ActivityTimeline unless issue security is set up. Can create/edit custom events for teams he/she belongs to. Can log time on behalf of users that are in the team he manages or edit and approve their worklogs.
Team Lead	Project Managers Team Leaders Scrum Masters	No access	Plan: Own data and users from the team he manages or users that are on the same team as this user Work: Own data and users from the team he manages Track: Own data and users from the team he manages Report: Own data and users from the team he manages	See issues assigned to him/her and their teammates and log time on those. Can create/edit custom events for all users. Can log time on behalf of users that are in the team he manages or edit and approve their worklogs.
Power Employee	Senior level employees Team leads People who mentor other employees	No access	Plan: All teams Work: Own data Track: Own data Report: All teams (if the report includes worklogs, then can see only the teams he manages)	See all issues from activated projects in ActivityTimeline unless issue security is set up. Can create/edit custom events for all users.
Employee	Default role for all employees All non-manager roles that are only responsible for their tasks	No access	Plan: Own timeline and users that are on the same team as this user Work: Own data Track: Own data Report: Own data and team he is part of (if the report includes worklogs, then can see only own data)	See and log time for issues assigned to self and teammates Can create/edit custom events for teams he/she belongs to.
Limited Employee	For all organizations that don’t allow employees to see tasks/issues/events of other employees	No access	Plan: Own data Work: Own data Track: Own data Report: Own data	See and log time for issues assigned to self. Can create/edit custom events on his/her timeline only.

Restrictions

Activity Timeline add-on allows assigning different types of Restrictions in addition to other roles.

Restrictions	Access to Modules	Additional Permissions
Semi Read-Only	This role can be applied in addition to any other role. Has the same access to all ActivityTimeline configuration settings as the original role.	Users with this role have full access to their own timeline and read-only access to the timeline of other users.
Read-Only	This role can be applied in addition to any other role. Has the same access to all ActivityTimeline configuration settings as the original role.	Users with this role will have read-only access to the dashboard. He can log time on the tasks that he can see in ActivityTimeline

The employee user role is set as a default role for newly added users but you can modify that in Configurations → Synchronization → Refresh Users.

Team Leads Management

A Team Lead is an additional permission designed to grant users with the Employee or Power Employee role managerial permissions within a specific team while retaining their Employee or Power Employee permissions in other teams. Specifically, a Team Lead will have access to the Timesheets of their Managed Teams and will be able to approve Timesheets and Events for these teams.

Team Leads page, under Configurations → Teams, contains information about the name and position of a Team Lead and the team name.

To view any existing teams that don't have an assigned Team Lead click on the Switch button with the description "Shows Teams without a Team Lead".

This page is designed to view all teams that don't have Team Leads yet. To assign them a Team Lead click on the Assign a Manager button or on the team name, and you'll be redirected to the Edit Team page. Once a Team Manager is assigned, the team is added to the list of teams with managers.

Assigning User Roles

We recommend using the Bulk mode in Configuration → Users to assign roles to users in bulk, which helps avoid manual work. This feature can also be used to assign positions and skills.

Alternatively, you can use Jira Groups mapping which will be covered in the next modules.

If you do not want someone to access the add-on, you can set their permission level to ‘No Access.’ For the cloud version, they will still see ActivityTimeline in the app's drop-down, but clicking on it will result in an error message. For the DC version, it is possible to configure the display of ActivityTimeline menu on the Jira header to users in some groups only in Configurations → Apps Settings → ActivityTimeline Visibility.

ActivityTimeline offers flexibility in controlling what users can see by reusing Jira permissions alongside its built-in user roles. Two key settings affect this:

Reuse Jira Permissions per Project

Description: This setting determines whether ActivityTimeline should reuse Jira Project Permissions in addition to the built-in ActivityTimeline User Roles.

Functionality:

When enabled (checked), both Jira Project Permissions and ActivityTimeline User Roles are used to filter issues and projects for each logged-in user.
When disabled (unchecked), only the default ActivityTimeline User Roles are used for filtering

Default Value: Checked (enabled).

Reuse Jira Permissions per Issue (slow)

Description: This setting determines whether ActivityTimeline should reuse Jira Issue Permissions in addition to the built-in ActivityTimeline User Roles.

Functionality:

When enabled (checked), both Jira Issue Permissions and ActivityTimeline User Roles are used to filter issues, projects, and teams for each logged-in user. Note that enabling this feature may decrease the performance of the dashboard.
When disabled (unchecked), only the default ActivityTimeline User Roles are used for filtering.

Default Value: Unchecked (disabled).

Important Note: Enabling these settings provides more granular control over what users can see based on their Jira permissions. However, enabling the “Reuse Jira Permissions per Issue” setting may lead to a decrease in dashboard performance due to the additional checks required.

By default, “Reuse Jira Permissions per Project” is enabled, and “Reuse Jira Permissions per Issue” is disabled to balance between security and performance.

You can configure these settings under the Configurations → Advanced Settings page.

If you have any additional questions related to the following section, please don’t hesitate to contact our team at: support@reliex.com.

Also, you can check our Quick Start Guide to get started with ActivityTimeline in under 5 minutes.