Which statement defines external directories?

• A. Internal directories are sourced from external apps.
• B. External directories are user/group info from external apps like Jira and Crowd.
• C. Internal directories replace external directories.
• D. External directories store only groups.

Answer: (B)

External directories are the sources of user and group information that live outside the Confluence/Jira instance. They connect to external systems so authentication and permission checks happen against those outside stores, such as Crowd or LDAP/Active Directory, rather than data kept only inside the application. The statement captures this idea by describing external directories as bringing in user and group data from external apps like Crowd, which is exactly how centralized identity management works in Atlassian deployments. Internal directories, by contrast, are the data stored inside the application itself, while external directories provide identities and group memberships from external systems—not just groups, but users as well.