Since 2009
TELCOMA Global / Seat Reclaim for Jira / Documentation
Free the Jira seats nobody is using.
Seat Reclaim lists the licensed users on your Jira Cloud site who have done nothing in Jira for a period you choose, and frees their seats after you confirm by taking them out of the groups that give them product access. Every change is logged and can be undone.
Install
Three steps, all inside Jira.
Find the app
In Jira go to Settings → Apps → Find new apps and search for Seat Reclaim.
Start the trial
Free for up to 10 users. Larger sites get a 30-day trial that rolls into a subscription unless you cancel from Manage apps.
Approve the permissions
Read permissions, plus one write permission used only to take a user out of a group (reclaim) or put them back (undo).
Jira administrators can open the app under Settings → Apps → Seat Reclaim and see the list. Reclaiming needs a site admin, because Jira only lets site admins change group membership.
Find inactive users
Pick a period. Press the button. Come back when it's done.
- Choose a period: No activity in 30, 60, 90, 180 or 365 days.
- Click Find inactive users. The scan runs in the background; you can close the page.
- Each user gets a status: Ready (shows what reclaiming would free), Can't reclaim (with the reason), or Reclaimed. Their inactivity shows as a band: 90–180 days, 180–365 days, or over a year, or never.
Enter the yearly price of one seat for each product and press Save prices to see what the inactive seats cost a year, and what the users you select would save. Search by name or email and filter by product, inactivity or status across the whole list. Download CSV or Download Excel exports it.
Reclaim seats
Select, check the summary, confirm.
- Tick the users to reclaim, or use Select all ready, which covers everyone ready in the current filtered list.
- Click Reclaim seats for N users. A summary lists, for each person, the groups they will leave and the products they will lose.
- Confirm. For each person the app first checks live that they are still inactive, reads their groups again and plans again; only then are they taken out of those groups. Anyone who has used Jira since the scan is skipped and named in the result.
Afterwards the page shows Atlassian's own seat count for each product, before and after. Freeing a seat lowers the number of users Atlassian counts; Atlassian bills by user tier, usually from the next billing cycle, so the price may only drop once the count falls below a tier.
History and undo
Every change is written down, and every change can be reversed.
What History shows
For each reclaim: whose seat, who did it, when, which groups they left and which products were freed. Undone reclaims show who undid them and when.
Undo
Puts the person back into exactly the groups that reclaim removed, which gives them their products back. It uses a seat again.
Who can't be reclaimed
The rules are built in, not left to memory.
If a user's access comes from an admin group, the app won't touch them. Remove their admin role in Atlassian Administration first if that's what you want.
The app never removes the person running it.
Click Protect on anyone you want left alone — a service account, someone on leave. Protected users are never reclaimed until you unprotect them.
Groups synced from Okta, Microsoft Entra ID or another identity provider can only be changed there. Jira refuses the change and the app tells you so. If your provider adds people back on its next sync, remove them in the provider too.
Ask Rovo
Ask about your seats in plain words.
Seat Reclaim includes a Rovo agent. In Jira, click Ask Rovo, open the agent list and choose Seat Reclaim for Jira.
Try asking
“How many seats can I reclaim, and what would that save a year?” · “Why can't some users be reclaimed?” · “What was reclaimed recently?”
What it won't do
It only reads. It can't reclaim, undo or protect anyone; those happen on the app page, after you confirm. Only Jira administrators get answers.
Answers come from Atlassian Rovo and count toward your site's Rovo allowance, like any other agent.
Your data
Nothing leaves Atlassian.
User names, account IDs, product access groups, and the author and time of recent issue changes, comments and work logs. It does not read issue text, comment text or attachments.
Only group membership, and only for users you confirm: out of product access groups on reclaim, back in on undo.
The scan report, each user's groups at scan time, your protected list, the history of reclaims and undos, and your seat prices, in Atlassian's own storage for your site.
Nowhere. No servers of our own, no requests outside Atlassian. If you use the Rovo agent, Atlassian Rovo writes the answer, inside Atlassian.
Full details in the privacy policy.
Frequently asked
The questions admins ask first.
Does it deactivate accounts?
No. It takes people out of product access groups on this site. Their Atlassian account stays active, so they keep any other products and can be given access again at any time.
How fast does the seat come back?
Straight away: Atlassian's seat count drops as soon as the user has left the last group that gave them the product. The page shows the count before and after.
A Jira admin got "only site admins can change group membership".
That's Jira's rule. A Jira admin can see the list; a site admin has to do the reclaim or the undo.
Someone is listed who I know uses Jira every day.
If they only read issues or browse boards, they leave no trace Jira can report; no app can see logins or page views. Protect them, or check their last-active date in Atlassian Administration before reclaiming.
What happens if someone used Jira after the scan?
The app checks each person's activity and groups again just before reclaiming. Anyone active since the scan, or no longer safe to reclaim, is skipped and the result says why. Lists older than a week also get a reminder to scan again.
How is it priced?
Free for up to 10 users, then per user per month on your Atlassian invoice, with a free trial. The current price is on the Marketplace listing.
Support
Ask the people who built it.
When reporting a problem, include your site URL and what you expected to happen. We never need passwords or tokens.
Get help
One business day, usually much less.
- [email protected]
- Support page
- Known limits, what to include, status
- Response time
- Within one business day