N8n Jira Authentication with service accounts

Questions
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1

Describe the problem/error/question

I tried to use the Jira Nodes for N8n. It worked fine with my personal user account. I noticed that Atlassian offers service accounts. I guess it would be optimal to use such an Account for N8n, but I couldn’t get it to work to with a service user. When saving the credentials it always failed to authenticate.

I asked the doc’s AI of N8n, and it told me that the Jira node doesn’t support service users. I gave the Jira Service user these permissions:

Read
read:jira-work
read:jira-user
read:issue:jira
read:project:jira
read:project.property:jira
read:comment:jira
read:user:jira
read:group:jira
read:status:jira
read:workflow:jira
read:attachment:jira
read:board-scope:jira-software
read:sprint:jira-software

Write
write:jira-work
write:issue:jira
write:comment:jira
write:attachment:jira
write:webhook:jira

Manage
manage:jira-project
manage:jira-configuration
manage:jira-webhook

Delete
delete:issue:jira

So my question is, is it true that the Jira Node doesn’t support Service Users or did I misconfigure something? Did I misunderstand the point of Service Users? If it isn’t supported, is it a conscious decision to not support Service Users?

Let me know if I should open an issue on GitHub. I might even fork and implement it myself.

Information on your n8n setup

  • n8n version: 2.8.3
  • Database (default: SQLite): SQLite
  • n8n EXECUTIONS_PROCESS setting (default: own, main):
  • Running n8n via (Docker, npm, n8n cloud, desktop app): npm
  • Operating system: Windows
1 Like
2

The Jira node uses basic auth or the OAuth 2.0 authorization code flow. Atlassian service accounts authenticate via client credentials grant, which is a different OAuth flow the node probably doesn’t support yet.

3

You’ve hit the right issue — the Jira node doesn’t support service accounts yet. The node uses Basic Auth or OAuth 2.0 Authorization Code flow, but Atlassian service accounts use the Client Credentials grant flow, which is different. Workaround: either keep using your personal account, or create a dedicated non-admin user with just the permissions you need and use that as your n8n credentials. Your permission list is solid, but the node itself needs a code update to support Client Credentials. Worth adding to GitHub as a feature request if it’s not already there.