Your Jira and Confluence instances run smoothly, right up until the one Atlassian admin who knows how everything fits together gives notice, goes on parental leave or takes a long vacation.
Suddenly, nobody knows how to fix broken automation rules, too many custom fields are being created from various departments, and your instance is gathering clutter (making things run slowly). This article and accompanying checklist walks you through how to regularly maintain your Atlassian instance and how to set up admin your team for ongoing success.
One Atlassian admin is a single point of failure
In many mid-sized companies, one person is the Atlassian admin. They set up the projects, built the workflows, installed the apps and know which custom field nobody should touch. That works fine until they leave, or are assigned to manage a bunch of systems in addition to Atlassian.
The risk isn’t only lost knowledge. Some parts of your setup are tied directly to that person’s account:
- Admin access. If they’re your only organization admin, it’s difficult to add a new one.
- Automation rules that run as their user can fail once the account is deactivated.
- API tokens and integrations they created may stop, depending on how they were set up.
- App and license contacts often point to their inbox, so renewal notices are missed.
Atlassian itself recommends having more than one organization admin, in case one account is lost or compromised. In practice, plenty of teams still run on a single Atlassian admin, and only find the gaps after that person is gone.
The Atlassian admin continuity checklist
Work through these five steps in order. Ideally, start while your Atlassian admin is still around to answer questions. If they’ve already left, the same steps apply, they just take a bit more detective work.
1. Secure admin access first
Before anything else, make sure at least two people hold the organization admin role. Only an existing organization admin can give admin permissions to someone else, so add your second admin before the departing admin’s account is deactivated.
If it’s too late and no organization admin is reachable, Atlassian support can start a role transfer (Source: Atlassian Community).
While you’re there, review who has site admin and product admin rights, and remove access nobody needs anymore.
2. Audit API tokens and API keys
Two kinds of credentials matter here, and they behave differently:
- Organization API keys belong to the organization, not the admin who created them. They keep working after that admin leaves, so revoke any keys the departing admin had access to and issue new ones (Source: Atlassian).
- Personal API tokens stay usable as long as the account still has access to your site. Deactivating a user doesn’t automatically revoke them; Atlassian is still tracking that as an open feature request.
Before you remove the account, find out which scripts, integrations and automation rules use their tokens. Move those to a service account or another admin first, otherwise they’ll break the moment you cut access.
3. Reassign automation rules
Every Jira automation rule has an owner and an actor. If a rule runs as the departing Atlassian admin, it can fail once their account is deactivated. Switch the actor to the built-in “Automation for Jira” user and update the owner so failure notifications reach someone who will read them (Source: Atlassian Community).
4. Document what lives in their head
This is the step that saves you months later. Ask your Atlassian admin to write these down, or reconstruct this yourself if they’ve gone:
- Workflows, custom fields and screens, and why non-obvious ones exist
- Permission schemes and groups, and who requested what
- Installed apps, their configuration and who uses them
- SSO and user provisioning setup
- License tiers, renewal dates and billing contacts
- Recurring admin tasks: cleanups, quarterly reviews, user audits
5. Check app and license ownership
Finally, make sure renewals and vendor communication don’t land in an inbox nobody reads. Check who’s listed as the billing and technical contact for your Atlassian subscriptions and Marketplace apps, and update them to a shared address or a current team member. A missed renewal notice is an easy way to lose access to an app your teams depend on.
Hiring a replacement Jira administrator: what to know
Once the immediate risks are covered, the obvious next step is to hire a new Jira administrator. Before you post the role, it helps to know what you’re up against.
- Cost. In the US, a Jira administrator earns around $100,000 to $105,000 a year on average, and more in high-cost areas (Salary.com, ERI). Add benefits and recruiting costs on top.
- Credentials. If you want a certified Jira administrator, look for Atlassian’s ACP-120 (Jira Administration for Cloud) certification. Candidates are typically advised to have one to two years of hands-on Jira Cloud experience before taking it (Atlassian Community).
- Time. Finding, hiring and onboarding a professional Jira administrator can take months, and your backlog of requests keeps growing in the meantime.
And even the best new hire is still one person. When they go on vacation, get sick or move on, you’re back where you started.
Fix the root cause: a team instead of one Atlassian admin
The checklist above gets you through a handover. It doesn’t remove the single point of failure. For that, your Atlassian setup needs to be looked after by more than one person.
That’s the idea behind fractional admin support. Instead of hiring one Atlassian admin, you get a team of professional Jira administrators who know your setup:
- Always covered. Vacations, sick days and departures don’t leave you without an admin.
- Documentation by default. Your configuration, decisions and recurring tasks are written down as part of the service, not as an afterthought.
- Continuity planning built in. Admin access, automations and integrations are set up so they never depend on a single account.
- Senior expertise when you need it. Workflows, permissions, apps, licensing and Atlassian’s roadmap, without paying for a full-time hire.
If your Atlassian setup currently depends on one person, now is a good time to change that.