Use permissions and restrictions

Owned by Sami Jaatinen
Jan 16, 2017
2 min read

 

 

 

As a tool for communication and collaboration, we believe Confluence is at its best when everyone can participate fully. That's why space and page permissions are open by default, which means anyone can view, create, and edit content. Confluence keeps a history of all changes to your content, so it's easy to see who has changed what, and reverse any changes if you need to.

Confluence does, however, give you the choice to make your site, spaces, and pages as open or closed as you want to.

 

 

Space permissions

Every space has its own independent set of permissions, as chosen by its admin(s). The space admin can choose who has permission to:

  • View, add, or delete content
  • Add or delete comments
  • Restrict pages and blogs

You're automatically an admin for any space you create, including your personal space. Read more about space permissions in the guide to administering spaces.

Tip: Who's the space admin?

To find out who the space admin is for a particular space, choose Spaces > Space directory in the Confluence header, then choose the Space Details icon beside a space.

 

 

 

Page restrictions

Say you're working on a draft with someone and don't want anyone else to be able to see it until it's done. Or you have some sensitive information that you need to share with a select group before opening it up to a wider audience. This is where page restrictions come in handy. 

Page restrictions let you set, edit, and view restrictions on a specific page or blog post.

  1. Chose the Restrictions  icon at the top of the page
  2. Choose whether you just want to limit only who can Edit, or who can View and / or Edit
  3. Enter users or groups then click Add to add them to the list
    If you chose Viewing and Editing restricted you can further specify for each person or group whether they can edit or just view the page. 
  4. Apply the restrictions

 

 

How do permissions interact?

Restrictions and permissions don't override each other. To view a page, you need view permissions for both the page and the space it's in.

Page restrictions are inherited, so any restrictions added to a parent page will also apply to all of its child pages.

If someone's a space admin, and you've used page restrictions to prevent them viewing a page in their space, they won't be able to see the page when they navigate to it. They can, however, view a list of restricted pages and remove their restrictions.

What about links?

Space permissions and page restrictions affect how links between Confluence pages are displayed.

  • If someone doesn't have View space permissions, links to pages in that space aren't shown to them.
  • If someone has View space permissions, but the page has view restrictions, the link is visible but they'll get an "access denied" message when they click it.

Links to attachments are also affected. If the visitor doesn't have permission to view the page the attachment lives on, the link isn't rendered.