Manage global permissions in Confluence

10 min

Advanced

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 permission configuration
Recover space permissions

What are global permissions?

Global permissions control what groups of users can do in Confluence.

Global permissions are broad controls for your Confluence site. As a Confluence admin, you can use global 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.

Global 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 global permissions:

Select the Confluence administration icon to access Confluence administration.
Navigate to Security, and then Global permissions.

👇 Global permissions are found under Security in Settings.

The global permissions page in Confluence administration. The User groups tab is visible, and there are three groups with personal space and create space permissions.

Edit global 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.

Global permissions can’t be assigned to individual users, only the group.

To edit global permissions for user groups:

From the Global permissions screen, select the User groups tab.
Select Edit.
Find 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 global permissions for user groups.

The global permissions page in Confluence administration. The User groups tab is in edit mode, and there selectable checkboxes under Personal Space and Create Space permissions.

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:

From the Global permissions screen, select the Guests tab.
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.

The global permissions page in Confluence administration. The guests tab is selected, and the default space setup pop-up is visible.

Guests do not have access to Premium or value-add features like Team Calendar, Atlassian Intelligence, 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:

From the Global permissions screen, select the Public links tab.
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.

The global permissions page in Confluence administration. The public links tab is selected, and the “Allow public links on this site” option is toggled. Two spaces are selected below, and a dropdown menu says “Allow” and “Unblock.”

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:

From the Global permissions screen, select the Anonymous access tab.
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 permissions

Add people to all spaces and manage access.

Confluence admins can easily add users or groups 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 Security, then to Space permissions.
Select the All spaces tab.
Under ‘Add people to all spaces,’ select Choose a user or group.
Enter the name of the person or group in the text box. Then, select which spaces you want to add them to.
Under ‘Choose space permissions,’ select the checkboxes below the permissions the user or group should have access to in all the spaces.

👇 Confluence admins can add a user or group to all spaces on the Confluence site.

The space permissions page of Confluence administration. Under Add people to all spaces are options to choose who to add or remove and which spaces to allow. There is a section to choose space permissions as well.

Configure default space permissions.

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 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:

From the Space permissions screen, select the Defaults for new spaces tab.
Select Edit.
Find the group you want to edit. From that row, select the checkboxes below the various permissions.
If you want to add a group to the default permission scheme, type the group name in the search bar, then select Add.
Select Save.

👇 Default space permissions will be applied to any new space that is created.

The space permissions page in Confluence administration. The Defaults for new spaces is selected. An arrow is pointing to the edit button, where you can configure default space permissions. You can also allow public links from this screen.

Recover space permissions

Recover control over space permissions by becoming a space admin.

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 permissions.

If you're already an admin in the space, you'll see Manage access instead of Recover permissions.

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