JKM Tech Notes

If you work with Jira, Confluence, or other Atlassian cloud products, you’ll sooner or later land on Atlassian Administration (often called the “Admin hub”) at https://admin.atlassian.com. 🌐

To many IT admins, it feels like a “mission control centre” for the whole Atlassian org, so in this post I’ll walk you through each of the main menus and sub‑menus, what they do, and how they work in practice. 🧑‍💻

⚠️ Note: Your exact view depends on the role you have (Org Admin, Site Admin, User Access Admin, etc.), but the core structure stays the same. These screenshots are view for an Org Admin.

🗺️ What is the Atlassian Administration Dashboard?

The Atlassian Admin dashboard is a centralised portal for managing:

• Users and groups
• Sites (Jira/ Confluence / etc)
• Apps and integrations
• Security and compliance
• Audit logs and activity

Atlassian describes it as a mission‑control‑style interface that gives you a bird’s‑eye view of your org’s health, user activity, and security posture.

From the same place, you can:

• Spot unauthorised product usage
• Tweak security settings
• Respond to user access requests
• Get insights into active users and licenses

In short: if something is “organisation‑wide” in Atlassian, it’s usually managed here. 🚀

🧭 Navigating the Atlassian Admin Hub: A Detailed Guide

The left‑hand navigation menu in admin.atlassian.com acts as your organisation’s control centre. Here is a breakdown of what each menu item does and how it works in practice.

1. Overview 👀

• What it does: Provides a high‑level health snapshot of your entire organisation.
• How it works: It acts as your dashboard for immediate action. You’ll see summaries of Monthly Active Users (MAU), pending product access requests, and active security recommendations. Use this as your “daily briefing” to spot anomalies or pending requests before they become tickets.

2. Directory 👥

• What it does: The central repository for all human and machine entities in your org.
• How it works:
  • Users: View and manage every user across all sites.
  • Groups: Create and assign groups to manage access permissions efficiently at scale (e.g., adding a user to Engineering automatically grants them access to relevant Jira projects).
  • Domains: Verify your corporate domain to “claim” managed accounts, allowing you to enforce password and security policies on user accounts that end in your company’s email address.

3. Apps 🔌

• What it does: Manages all marketplace apps and internal integrations.
• How it works: You can install apps, review the data access scopes each app requires, and block specific apps that haven’t been approved by your IT team’s security review process.

4. Rovo 🤖

• What it does: Controls AI-powered features and agents across your Atlassian products.
• How it works:
  • Rovo Access: Manage which apps are permitted to leverage AI capabilities.
  • Rovo Studio: The interface for building and deploying custom AI agents that can automate tasks, like summarizing Jira tickets or retrieving information from connected Confluence spaces.

Rovo is something I want to explore more, btw!

5. Security 🔒

• What it does: The primary interface for hardening your organisation’s posture.
• How it works:
  • Login Policies: Enforce Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA), set session timeouts, and define password complexity.
  • Access Controls: Set trusted IP ranges to restrict access to your organisation data to specific office or VPN networks.

6. Data management 📊

• What it does: Provides granular control over your platform’s data infrastructure.
• How it works: Configure data residency policies to pin your data to specific regions (e.g., keeping data in the EU or Australia). This section also handles data transfers and connectivity settings for your apps. Backup up your Jira and Confluence data. Easily recover your data in case of accidental or malicious deletion.

7. Insights 📈

• What it does: Delivers data-driven analytics on how teams interact with Atlassian tools.
• How it works: Access charts showing analytics, usage, API token activity. This is invaluable for identifying unused licenses or areas where teams might need more training. Audit Logs: Search and export logs to track “who did what and when,” which is critical for incident response and compliance reporting.

8. Billing 💳

• What it does: A dedicated portal for all financial management.
• How it works: View subscriptions, manage payment methods, download invoices, and see upcoming renewal quotes. You can also designate specific users as Billing Administrators, granting them financial access without giving them full Org-Admin privileges.

9. Organization settings ⚙️

• What it does: Holds global configuration settings that define your organisation’s identity and external connections.
• How it works:
  • Profile: Update your organisation’s brand name and contact info or delete your organization.
  • API Keys: Generate and manage tokens used by internal scripts or third-party tools to communicate with the Atlassian API.
  • Emails: Personalize app emails with your own custom email addresses when sending email notifications.

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💡 Quick Admin Tip

If you manage multiple organisations, click the top-left company name (e.g., jkminfotech) to switch contexts immediately. Always double‑check you’re in the right organisation before applying changes, especially in Security or Directory, to avoid unintended impacts!