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A 'user' is the account for an individual who accesses Confluence.

New users are created by a Confluence administrator via the Administration Console. See Searching For and Managing Users for more information.

A Confluence administrator can also group users together into user groups for more convenient administration. This means that any permissions you assign at the site, space and page levels can be assigned to a whole group. A user in one of these groups will automatically be granted all permissions granted to the group.

There are two special groups in Confluence:

  • Confluence-Administrators - This is a 'super-group' and a user from this group has permission to do anything in the site regardless of any other setting.
  • Confluence-Users - This is the default group into which all new users are assigned. Permissions you assign to this group will be assigned to all newly signed-up users of Confluence.

Anonymous Users

Confluence treats all users who do not log in when they access Confluence as being 'Anonymous'. Administrators can assign permissions to this group separately.

Overlapping group and user permissions

When a user is assigned more than one permission, the most powerful permission will prevail.

Further explanation:

  • A user may be assigned a permission specifically to their username. They may also be assigned a permission by belonging to a group, or even several groups.
  • The user will then be able to perform all functions assigned to them.
  • So if a user is allowed to do something over and above what the group can do, the user will be able to do it. And if the group is allowed to do something over and above the specific permissions granted to the user, the user will still be able to do it.
Related Topics

Space Permissions Overview
Viewing Space Permissions
Assigning Space Permissions
Page Permissions
The Administrator's Guide to User Management in Confluence

Take me back to Confluence User's Guide

13 Comments

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  1. Sep 20, 2009

    Steve Pence

    An important ommission to this documentation is how a space administrator can (or cannot) see the contents of a group. If he cannot see which users are a member of a group, he cannot decide which groups to use in assigning permissions. It appears that only Confluence Administrators can veiw this crucial information. If true, this page should say something like "Space administrators need to work with Conflunence Administrators to be advised on the usage of groups, since only Confluence Administrators can view and manage groups" If I am misunderstanding this limitation, and Space Admins can view groups, this page needs to say how, or provide a link to a page documenting how group info can be viewed.

    1. Mar 14, 2010

      Anonymous

      Any user can view a groups membership by using the userlister macro.

  2. Apr 06, 2011

    Anonymous

    Thank you for that information, but how does a space administrator edit a group once it has been added by a previous space administrator?

  3. Apr 08, 2011

    Latif Nanji

    How does one use / get this userlister macro?

    1. Apr 10, 2011

      Paul Watson [Atlassian Technical Writer]

      Hi Latif. See http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC/Userlister Macro

  4. Jun 09, 2011

    Anonymous

    Is there a limit on the number of Anonymous users allowed to access your content? And do these Anonymous users require a true license if they cannot edit but just look around at your Wiki etc?

  5. Jun 09, 2011

    Anonymous

    Confluence 3.5.1 Upgrade Issues - Embedded Crowd for large enterprises

    Have any other organizations with a large user base (15,000+) and number of groups had issues upgrading to Confluence 3.5.1 or Confluence 3.5.x?

    What steps or solutions were taken to overcome the obstacles in Atlassian's recent *change in user management (*Embedded Crowd)?

    We are looking for solutions that we could easily leverage without using unsupported third-party tools and developing custom scripts.

    Any advice on a Confluence 3.5.x or 3.4.x upgrade?

  6. Jul 28, 2011

    Sam Hall

    Are there any plans to allow Space Admins to maintain a confluence group of their own? This could be achieved with the ability to assign owners to groups.

    If group owners could also assign and remove group owners from groups they own, this would make life so sweet for the Confluence admin. I'd only have to create the group and assign the first owner to it.

  7. Oct 07, 2011

    Anonymous

    Scenario: You want to give a client view-only access to a page or space within Confluence.  But, you also don't want just anyone (any other clients) to see the content being viewed.  At the same time, you don't want to blow through your user limits. 

    Does confluence offer a way for companies to assign secure access to view-only content without taking up a user toward the license subscription?  It is my understanding that 'Anonymous' access, while it would solve the user license issue, would leave content exposed to other Anonymous visitors.

    What would be your recommended solution?  Do we need to set up confluence access behind a company login (not necessarily a Confluence login) for clients?

    Thanks in advance,

    -Jeff "Anonymous"

    1. Oct 09, 2011

      Sam Hall

      Giving anyone, staff or client, just view only access to a single page isn't really the forte of a wiki. I can't imagine Atlassian would get much call for this feature. I've recently found you can customise Confluence for your specific needs using the Confluence XML-RPC and SOAP APIs.

      If I had a request to do what you're suggesting, I'd consider using webservices or perhaps a script with Confluence CLI to grab the content of the page periodically or on demand.

      Cheapest solution I can think of is to script a grab of a PDF copy of the page and email it to them periodically. Any solution that requires the user to login will be a bit more complex, then for the effort you might as well just pay to upgrade your user licenses. Hope that helps.

  8. Nov 17, 2011

    Anonymous

    Is there a way to list all the spaces a group has access to?

    Thanks in advance

    1. Jan 24, 2012

      Anna Mikhaylova

      I have the same question...

      1. Jan 26, 2012

        Anonymous

        I'd like to see an increased role selection. For instance, in higher education, many times we have IT or academic support folks who we don't want to be full administrators working with faculty and students. We'd like to see a sub-admin where we can assign that person to a space and that person would have the ability to create groups within the space. An example scenario: a faculty member teaching two sections of the same course, uses one wiki space, but would like to create groups from both sections that include students from both sections for each group. I think this is a very common practice in the course management world and I can't hardly believe that the wiki would not want this feature as well. We have many requests for this. Any chance there is a way to do this now and I'm just missing it?