Configuration

Everything an administrator controls lives in one place:

Jira Settings > Apps > Share Public Link

The page has six tabs: Info, Shared Work Items, Shared Boards, Shared Filters, Sharing Policy and Audit Logs.

Sharing policy

This is the tab that matters. It decides who may share, which projects filters may reach, and how long links live.

Who can share

There are three separate permissions, one per kind of sharing, each with the same three options:

Option	Effect
All users can share	Any licensed Jira user can create links of this kind
Restrict to specific groups	Only members of the groups you pick
Disable for everyone	Nobody can create new links of this kind

Permission	Controls
Work Item Share Permissions	Sharing individual Work Items
Jira Software Boards Share Permissions	Sharing boards
Filter Share Permissions	Sharing saved filters

All three default to All users can share.

Letting every user create public links can lead to unintended exposure of Jira data. We recommend restricting each permission to trusted groups — project managers, team leads, support leads — rather than leaving it open.

Disabling a permission does not switch off links that already exist. It only stops new ones being created. Live links keep working until they expire or are revoked individually from the overview tabs.

Allowed projects for filter sharing

Filter sharing has an extra control the other two do not need, and it is the most important setting on this page.

A Work Item link exposes one Work Item and a board link exposes one board — both bounded by the thing being shared. A filter is arbitrary JQL, so it has no natural boundary. The approved-projects list is that boundary.

Every shared filter is restricted to the projects you approve here. The restriction is combined with the filter's own JQL, so a filter matching Work Items outside the approved list does not return them — regardless of who created the link, what the filter's JQL says, or how it is edited afterwards.

An empty list means no filter can be shared at all. This is the one setting whose empty state is a denial rather than "no policy", and it is deliberate: an administrator has to make a conscious decision about which projects may leave Jira before the feature does anything.

Until you approve at least one project, the Share a filter button is grayed out for everyone, with a note explaining why. Work Item and board sharing are unaffected — the three permissions are independent.

When choosing projects, the question to ask is "is everything in this project safe to show someone outside the company?" — because any user permitted to share filters can expose any Work Item in an approved project.

Maximum results per filter link

How many Work Items one shared filter will ever return, 1000 by default. Recipients load results 50 at a time up to this ceiling, then the page tells them it has stopped.

Keep it low enough that a shared link cannot be used as a bulk export of an approved project.

Link expiry policy

Two settings, both covered in detail in Link Expiration:

• Default expiry for new links — pre-selected whenever anyone creates a link. They can still change it, including back to Never. A nudge rather than a control, but an effective one.
• Maximum lifetime — a hard ceiling. While set, Never is unavailable to everyone.

Lowering the maximum lifetime does not shorten links that already exist — the cap applies when a link is saved, not when it is opened. This avoids silently killing hundreds of live links the moment the setting is changed. See Link Expiration.

Saving

Changes are not saved until you press Save changes (or Cmd/Ctrl + S). An "unsaved changes" banner appears while anything is pending.

Monitoring shared links

Three tabs give a complete inventory of every live link on the site, whoever created it:

Tab	Lists
Shared Work Items	Every shared Work Item, with who shared it and when
Shared Boards	Every shared board
Shared Filters	Every shared filter, with its name and the saved filter behind it

Each row shows the creator, the creation date, and an Expires column that flags links expiring within 24 hours and labels those already expired. Every row can be revoked from its ⋯ menu — including links you did not create, which is how you clean up after someone who has left the team.

tip

The fastest audit is to sort the Expires column and look at everything reading Never. Those are the links that will outlive whatever they were created for.

Audit logs

A chronological record of sharing activity across all three kinds of link: every one created, changed and revoked, with the user and timestamp. Filter entries show the share's name and link back to the saved filter behind it, including for links that have since been revoked.

Use it to spot patterns — a burst of new links, or sharing from an unexpected account — and to answer "who shared this, and when?" after the fact.

Where users create links

Worth knowing, because two of the three are not on this page:

Kind	Created from
Work Item	The Work Item's ⋯ Actions menu > Share Public Link
Board	The board's ⋯ menu > Share Public Link
Filter	Apps > Share Public Link > Share a filter

The Apps > Share Public Link page also serves as every user's personal list of the links they have created, across all three kinds, where they can copy, edit and revoke them. It is available to any licensed user, not just administrators.

Recommended baseline

For an organization setting the app up for the first time:

1. Restrict all three sharing permissions to specific groups.
2. Approve only the projects whose entire contents are safe to share externally — start with none and add deliberately.
3. Set a default expiry of 30 days, so links get one without anyone thinking about it.
4. Set a maximum lifetime of 90 days, so no link is permanent.
5. Review the three overview tabs monthly, sorting by Expires and revoking anything reading Never.