User directories are what JIRA uses to store information about users and groups. A user directory is backed by a user repository system, such as LDAP, a database, or a remote user management system, such as Atlassian Crowd.
You can have multiple user directories in JIRA. This allows you to connect your JIRA instance to multiple user repositories. For example, you can have an LDAP directory for your internal users and a database directory (a JIRA internal directory) for external users. An example is given in the following screenshot, where we have two user directories configured. The first user directory is the built-in JIRA Internal directory running on the JIRA database. The second user directory is connected to the Microsoft Active Directory (Read Only) in the read-only mode. The last user directory is connected to the crowd, a user identity management software from Atlassian:
As a JIRA administrator, you can manage user directories by performing these two steps:
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