User Roles and Permissions

Overview

Permission management in ActivityTimeline is controlled through User Roles.

ActivityTimeline roles are separate from Jira permission schemes. They define what users can access inside ActivityTimeline, which modules they can use, and what actions they can perform.

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There are two main groups of roles:

Power roles: Administrator, Manager, Team Lead, and Power Team Lead.
Employee roles: Power Employee, Employee, and Limited Employee.

Power roles are usually assigned to users who manage teams, approve time off or timesheets, review reports, or need broader planning visibility.

Employee roles are typically assigned to most users in the organization and are focused on personal planning, time tracking, and limited reporting access

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. Can modify capacity or add skills, positions to users that are in the team he manages.
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. Can modify capacity or add skills, positions to users that are in the team he manages.
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 own data)	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

ActivityTimeline also allows applying additional restrictions on top of the selected user role.

Restrictions do not replace the user role. Instead, they limit what the user can do while keeping the original role structure.

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

Team Lead and Power Team Lead are user roles in ActivityTimeline.

After assigning one of these roles to a user, you can assign that user as a Team Lead for a specific team. The role defines the user’s permission level, while the team assignment defines which team or teams they manage.

A Team Lead can access Timesheets for their managed teams and approve Timesheets and Events for those teams.

Team Leads can also access the Users tab in the Configuration section, where they can view and update selected user details for members of their managed teams, including:

Capacity
Position
Skills/Tags

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You can also allow a Team Lead to add or remove users from their team by navigating to Configuration → Advanced Settings.

However, please note that enabling this setting should be considered carefully, as it grants Team Leads the ability to add any user to their team. This means they will also be able to view those users’ schedules and worklogs.

For more detailed information visit: Team Leads .

Assigning User Roles

We recommend using Bulk Mode under Configuration → Users to assign roles to multiple users at once. This helps reduce manual work when managing a large number of users.

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Bulk Mode can also be used to update other user details, such as:

Positions
Capacity
Skills
User roles

Alternatively, you can assign roles through Jira group mapping. This option is covered in the next modules.

No Access Role

If you do not want a user to access ActivityTimeline, set their permission level to No Access.

In the Cloud version, the user may still see ActivityTimeline in the Jira apps menu. However, clicking the app will display an access error.

In the Data Center version, you can control ActivityTimeline visibility in the Jira header for specific Jira groups under:

Configuration → App Settings → ActivityTimeline Visibility

Please note that deactivating a user in Jira does not delete the user from ActivityTimeline. Instead, the user is assigned No Access in ActivityTimeline. This allows ActivityTimeline to retain historical data, such as past schedules, worklogs, reports, and other user-related records.

Reusing Jira permissions

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.