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You can deploy Jira and Confluence AI agents safely if you treat access as a stack of independent controls: who may create or discover an agent, which identity it uses, which Atlassian apps that identity can enter, which spaces and pages it can reach, which tools it may run, and whether an external MCP connection is allowed. Configure each layer separately; an agent’s directory visibility never grants it permission to read your projects or pages.
The safest rollout is to govern creation first, restrict sensitive agents, choose a user or dedicated agent identity deliberately, grant the minimum app and content permissions, enable only necessary tools, and then test and audit the exact identity and connection path. The steps below follow that order for Rovo agents and for third-party MCP agents.
Understand the six access layers before creating an agent
“Agent access” is not one Jira or Confluence switch. A Rovo agent can be visible in a directory while still being unable to read a private space, and an agent hidden from the directory can still perform powerful actions for an authorized user. Evaluate these layers independently:
- Creation: who is allowed to build agents in Rovo Studio.
- Discovery and use: who can find, open, or invoke a particular agent.
- Identity: whether the agent acts as the current user or as a separate agent account.
- Application access: which Jira-family apps and Confluence sites the identity can use.
- Content permissions: which projects, issues, spaces, pages, and comments are actually readable or editable.
- Tools and integrations: which actions, connected apps, and MCP servers can receive requests or make changes.
Rovo agents are discoverable by everyone by default, but an owner can turn off open access and add people individually. Current Atlassian guidance does not support using groups to restrict access to a specific agent. Directory visibility is therefore an audience setting, not a data-permission setting. An agent acting for a person sees and changes only what that person can see and change, subject to the tools and instructions configured for the agent. See Atlassian’s Rovo agent permissions and governance and agent actions documentation.
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Check prerequisites and assign responsibilities
Confirm the tenant’s current Rovo availability and administrator roles before writing a rollout plan. Atlassian documents Rovo support for Standard, Premium, and Enterprise plans and says it is not available to Government organizations; plan entitlements and admin screens can change, so verify them in your site.
- Rovo Studio governance: a Studio administrator controls who can create agents.
- Site administration: needed for some Rovo, AI, MCP, and third-party connection settings.
- Organization administration: required for organization-wide app and group controls. Atlassian documents some agent-management functions as requiring Atlassian Guard Premium plus an Organization admin or Guard Detect admin role; confirm that entitlement and role in your tenant.
- App, project, space, and page owners: these administrators own the narrower permissions an agent ultimately relies on.
- Security and compliance owners: review audit records, external data handling, and retention requirements before enabling integrations.
Write down who owns each layer. A common failure is having an organization administrator approve Rovo while no one owns the private Confluence spaces or Jira projects that determine what the agent can actually read.
Set up Rovo agents in a controlled sequence
1. Restrict who can create agents
Start in Rovo Studio settings and choose the creation audience before anyone builds production agents. The documented choices are:
| Creation setting | When it fits | Control detail |
|---|---|---|
| All users | Experimentation in a low-risk site with an established review process | Default setting; directory growth and ownership must be monitored |
| Selected groups | Delegated development by approved teams | Up to 10 user groups can be selected |
| No users | Centralized development by administrators only | Use when agents require formal change control |
Allowing creation does not grant access to restricted Jira projects or Confluence spaces, but it can create many agents whose owners and instructions are hard to review. Begin with a small builder group, document an owner for every production agent, and expand only after the inventory and review process works.
2. Set agent visibility and ownership
Open each agent’s access settings. Leave open access only for genuinely general assistants. For sensitive, experimental, or write-capable agents, switch off open access and add the specific people who need to use it. Because group-based restriction is currently not supported for agent visibility, add named users individually and maintain that list when staffing changes.
Separate the roles:
- Owner: accountable for the agent’s purpose, instructions, identity, and permissions.
- Editor: can maintain prompts, tools, or configuration when that maintenance responsibility is needed.
- Manager: can edit, add editors, and delete the agent. Grant this role sparingly.
Review an agent after its owner leaves a team, after a major instruction change, and before adding a write tool. Removing a person from the agent’s audience does not automatically remove that person’s Jira or Confluence permissions, and changing the audience does not change the identity’s underlying content access.
3. Choose the identity deliberately
Rovo supports two useful identity patterns. A user-account agent acts with the permissions of the interacting user; its actions are attributed to that user. An agent-account agent has a separate permission set managed for the agent itself. Atlassian describes the latter as useful for automation when relying on an individual employee’s permissions would be unsafe. The identity setting is documented in Understand Rovo agent accounts and Configure a Rovo agent’s identity.
| Decision axis | User account | Agent account |
|---|---|---|
| Permission scope | Inherits the current user’s Jira and Confluence permissions | Has a separately managed permission set |
| Audit attribution | Activity is attributed to the interacting user; in an automation, it is attributed to the user who configured that automation | Activity is attributed to the agent |
| Best fit | Interactive assistance, where each person should see only their own accessible content | Unattended or scheduled automation that needs a stable, constrained identity |
| Permission maintenance | Changes when the user’s role, groups, or project and space permissions change | Maintained directly by administrators across organization, app, and content layers |
For a personal assistant that summarizes issues a person already handles, a user identity usually provides the least surprise. For a nightly triage or page-maintenance flow, an agent account makes the allowed scope explicit and avoids inheriting a departing employee’s access. In every automation, inspect the configured identity: no human may approve each individual step.
4. Grant app access first, then content access
For an agent account, organization administrators decide which Atlassian apps the account may use. App and space administrators, together with content owners, then narrow access to the relevant Jira projects, Confluence spaces, pages, and comments. Treat this as a two-stage gate:
- Application gate: allow only the Jira or Confluence application required for the workflow.
- Content gate: grant only the projects, issue security levels, spaces, page restrictions, and comment visibility required for the task.
Do not give an agent broad Confluence access merely because it needs one knowledge space. Do not assume Jira application access means every project or issue is readable. Conversely, a user-account agent may gain new content access automatically when that user is added to a project or space, so review interactive agents after role changes.
Ask the agent to perform a harmless read or draft operation in the intended project or space as a permission check. Treat the result as a test of that specific path, not proof that other projects, archived pages, attachments, or comments are protected. Keep consequential write operations disabled until the read boundary is verified.
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Rovo tools can create or edit Jira work items and Confluence pages when the active identity has permission. Select the smallest tool set that completes the job: for example, issue search and draft generation rather than issue transition, bulk edit, and page deletion. Tools do not bypass the identity’s permissions, but a tool can make an allowed action easier to invoke at scale.
In documented chat experiences, consequential cross-system changes prompt for confirmation. That prompt is a useful safeguard for interactive use, not a substitute for least privilege in automations, where a user may not be present. Review every connected app’s scopes and revoke its authorization when the integration is no longer needed. Record the app owner, data destination, and removal procedure.
6. Decide whether organization-wide Rovo access is appropriate
Organization administrators can manage Rovo availability at the app level. Atlassian’s organization guidance is at Manage agents in your organization, while general Rovo access controls are described in Manage Rovo access.
Blocking one Jira-family app may not remove shared AI features if another Jira-family app remains enabled on the site. If the requirement is to disable all Jira-family AI, identify and block every applicable Jira-family app rather than stopping after the first switch. Atlassian documents different Enterprise and general administration experiences, so compare the labels and plan requirements shown in your own Admin Hub before applying a procedure.
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Control MCP connections separately
Atlassian’s MCP policy is an additional deny boundary
The Atlassian MCP server has a dedicated control that can deny protected MCP access even when a user can view the same Jira data directly. The policy applies to OAuth authentication and works alongside ordinary user permissions. It does not govern API-token authentication and does not cover custom MCP servers. The exact scope is described in Prevent Atlassian MCP server access.
Use this policy when your requirement is “do not allow this identity to use Atlassian’s MCP server.” Do not treat it as a universal MCP kill switch: a custom server, a token-based client, or a vendor-hosted connector needs its own control and review.
Review third-party MCP agents before enabling them
Out-of-the-box third-party MCP agents are not available merely because Rovo is enabled. A site administrator must enable each server in Admin Hub. Before doing so, review the provider’s data-handling terms, requested scopes, storage and retention practices, sub-processors, and the actions it can perform. Atlassian’s procedure is documented in Out-of-the-box third-party MCP agents.
For each connection, document four facts:
- Which vendor service receives prompts, retrieved content, and tool results.
- Which OAuth scopes or API-token permissions expose data or actions.
- Which administrator can disable that exact server or revoke its authorization.
- Whether the agent uses a user identity, an agent identity, OAuth, or token authentication.
Require explicit enablement for production and start with a test site or a narrowly permissioned identity. Disabling Atlassian MCP does not disable that third-party server.
Enable Confluence collaboration only after page permissions are ready
Confluence collaboration features that use agent mentions require a site administrator to enable the relevant Rovo, AI, or MCP features. An agent can use the page and comment context that the active identity is allowed to access. Configure space and page restrictions before turning on mentions, especially in spaces containing personnel, legal, security, or customer information. The feature’s current prerequisites and behavior are described in Collaborate on Confluence content with AI agents.
Generated output can vary in quality, accuracy, and reliability. Keep a human review step for policy, legal, financial, or customer-facing text. A page restriction prevents an agent from retrieving that page, but it cannot validate whether generated prose is correct; access control and editorial review solve different problems.
Test the boundary before production
Use a repeatable test matrix rather than a single successful prompt. For each identity and tool, record the expected result and the actual audit event.
- Ask for a harmless read from an allowed project and an allowed Confluence space.
- Attempt the same read from a deliberately restricted project, page, attachment, and comment thread. Expect a denial or no result.
- Ask for a draft without saving it, then verify that the identity cannot edit content outside its assigned scope.
- For every enabled write tool, test one low-risk change and confirm the audit attribution.
- Run the same tests through each connected MCP path, noting whether OAuth or token authentication was used.
- Remove a test user, revoke a connected app, or disable the MCP server, then confirm that subsequent requests fail.
A low-risk test in the intended space proves only that one path works. It does not establish protection for every project, page, inherited permission, attachment, or integration. Keep screenshots or audit references with the change record so a later administrator can reproduce the check.
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The agent appears in the directory but cannot read a page
This is usually expected. Visibility and content permissions are separate. Check the active identity, Confluence space membership, page restrictions, and comment permissions. If the agent uses a user account, test with that user’s own Confluence session; if it uses an agent account, inspect the account’s app and space grants.
The agent reads more after an employee changes teams
A user-account agent follows that person’s current permissions. Review the user’s project roles, groups, issue security, and space memberships, then decide whether the agent should be converted to a separately managed agent account with a narrower static scope.
An automation changed data without a person approving it
Confirm which identity the automation uses and whether write tools are enabled. For unattended flows, use an agent account with only the required project and space permissions, remove destructive tools, and verify that audit records attribute changes to the intended agent.
Direct Jira access works, but an MCP request is denied
The Atlassian MCP policy may be blocking OAuth MCP access independently of ordinary Jira permissions. Check the policy and authentication method. Remember that the policy does not cover API-token authentication or custom MCP servers.
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Users still see AI after one Jira-family app is blocked
Shared features may remain available through another Jira-family app enabled on the site. Inventory all applicable Jira-family apps and apply the organization-level decision consistently.
A team wants group-based agent visibility
Current Rovo guidance supports individual users for an agent’s restricted audience, not groups. Maintain the named-user list as part of onboarding and offboarding, and use creation-group controls separately to govern who may build new agents.
Maintain control after launch
Access control is a lifecycle task, not a one-time setup. Schedule a review whenever an agent’s owner, identity, tools, connected app, project, or Confluence space changes. At each review:
- Confirm the owner and managers are still appropriate.
- Compare the agent’s audience with current business need.
- Recheck app, project, space, page, and comment permissions.
- Remove tools and OAuth grants that are no longer required.
- Inspect audit records for unexpected reads, writes, or identity changes.
- Retest a denied project and denied page, not just an allowed example.
- Review external MCP providers’ terms and scopes before renewing access.
Keep a small register containing the agent’s purpose, owner, identity type, allowed apps and content, enabled tools, MCP servers, administrator, and next review date. That register makes it possible to answer “what can this agent reach?” without reconstructing settings from several Atlassian administration screens.
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For interactive help, start with a user-account Rovo agent, restricted visibility, read-focused tools, and the minimum projects or spaces the user already needs. For scheduled or unattended work, create a dedicated agent account, grant only the required app and content permissions, and make its writes auditable. For any external MCP connection, add a separate vendor review and an explicit site-admin enablement decision. This layered design preserves the benefits of Jira and Confluence automation without confusing an agent’s visibility with permission to access everything.
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