Manage access to your Confluence site
10 min
By the end of this lesson, you'll be able to:
- Manage what groups of users can do in your Confluence site
- Assign a space to a guest
- Control whether spaces can allow public links or anonymous access
- Define the default space access configuration
- Recover space access
What are site permissions?
Site permissions (previously referred to as global permissions) are broad controls for your Confluence site. As a Confluence admin, you can use site permissions to see which user groups and which types of users currently have access to your Confluence site and make high-level decisions about what they can do on it, like view, create, and edit pages.
Site permissions only apply to the given Confluence site. Changes made to one Confluence site won’t affect any other Confluence sites you manage.
To access site permissions:
- Select the Confluence administration icon to access Confluence administration.
- Navigate to Permissions, and then Site permissions.
👇 Site permissions are found under Permissions in Settings.
Edit site permissions
Manage what user groups can do in Confluence.
Org admins give licensed users access to the Confluence site as members of user groups. Users can’t be added individually.
Site permissions can’t be assigned to individual users, only the group.
To edit site permissions for user groups:
- Navigate to the Site permissions page.
- Select Edit.
- Locate the user group or groups you want to edit.
- Select the Personal space or Create space check boxes, then select Save.
👇 Here’s how to edit site permissions for user groups.
Assign a space to a guest.
Before a guest can access Confluence, they need to be assigned to a space. Guests are limited to one space in Confluence and have limited access to user information. Confluence admins can assign a default space where all future guests will be automatically added. They can also assign a specific space to individual guests.
👇 Click the tabs to see how you can assign a space to a guest.
To assign a default space to future guests:
- Select the Confluence administration icon to access Confluence administration.
- Navigate to Permissions, and then Guest access.
- From the Default space section, select Assign default space.
- Select the desired space from the dropdown, then select Save.
All future guest users will be automatically added to this space.
Guests do not have access to Premium or value-add features like Team Calendar, Rovo, and Analytics.
Allow or block public links on your Confluence site.
Public links allow Confluence users to share content with anyone on the internet. That means people can view content in the public link without needing access to your Confluence site.
Confluence admins can decide whether or not they want to allow public links on their site. If you allow public links, you can decide on a more granular level which spaces to allow or block from allowing public links.
To manage public links:
- Select the Confluence administration icon to access Confluence administration.
- Navigate to Security, and then Public links.
- Select the Allow public links on this site toggle to allow public links.
- Navigate to the list of spaces. Select the checkbox next to the space or spaces you want to manage.
- Select Stop allowing, Block, Allow, or Unblock.
👇 Confluence admins can decide whether or not they want to allow public links on their site.
Want to view a space’s public links? Select the number that appears in the Public links column of the list. From there, you can view the content title, views, and other information.
Enable anonymous access across your Confluence site.
Confluence admins have the ability to enable anonymous access on their Confluence site. This means that anyone on the internet can access your Confluence site. However, Confluence admins and space admins can still choose which spaces within the site they want to make public and which ones they want to secure.
To enable anonymous access:
- Select the Confluence administration icon to access Confluence administration.
- Navigate to Security, and then Anonymous access.
- Select Edit.
- Select the checkboxes below Use Confluence and View User Profile, then select Save.
👇 Here’s how to enable anonymous access to your Confluence site.
Anonymous access doesn’t factor into your license count.
Manage space access
Add people to all spaces and manage access
Confluence admins can easily add users, groups or user classes to all spaces on your Confluence site. This is helpful if you have, for example, a group of admins or an organizational leader who needs access to all the spaces in your site.
To add people to all spaces:
- Select the Confluence administration icon to access Confluence administration.
- Navigate to Permissions, then to Bulk space access.
- Enter the user, group or user class. Then select which action to perform and on which spaces.
- Select the access you want to grant them using roles.
- Select Add to all.
👇 Confluence admins can add a user or group to all spaces on the Confluence site.
Configure default space access
Space permissions in Confluence control access to content within a space. Confluence admins can configure the default space permissions that will be assigned to groups or user classes when a new space is added. Admins can also control whether to allow public links on any new space that is created.
To configure default space permissions:
- Select the Confluence administration icon to access Confluence administration.
- Navigate to Permissions, then to Space defaults.
- Select + Add people to manage default access for a specific group or user class.
- Find the group or user class you want to manage access for then assign a role.
- Select Save.
- If you want to manually specify permissions and move off roles, you can select the More menu (represented by ...) then Manage access.
👇 Default space access will be applied to any new space that is created.
Recover space access
Confluence admins can access permissions for any space on the site. If a space doesn’t have a space admin, like if the space admin left the organization, Confluence admins can recover permissions and become a space admin for that space.
👉 For example: LaToya is a Confluence admin at Acme, Inc. One of her teammates lets her know that the space admin of the Marketing space has left the company. LaToya assigns herself space admin permissions in the Marketing space. That allows her to then assign space admin permissions to another teammate on the Marketing team.
To recover space permissions:
- Select the Confluence administration icon to access Confluence administration.
- Navigate to Security, then to Space permissions.
- Locate the space in the spaces list and select Recover admin permissions.
If you're already an admin in the space, you'll see Manage access instead of Recover permissions.