Global Permissions Overview

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Global Permissions determine the actions which a user is allowed to perform in Confluence at a site level. To assign global permissions to a user or group you need Confluence Administrator or greater permissions. 

The first system administrator is created in the setup wizard when Confluence is first set up. This user has the system administrator global permission and is a member of the confluence-administrators group.

(warning) The default confluence-administrators group is a special, super-user group. Learn more.

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Overview of global permissions

The following global permissions can be applied to groups and individuals. 

Global Permission

Description

Can Use

This is the most basic permission that allows users to access the site.

Users with this permission count towards the number of users allowed by your license.

Attach Files to User Profile

This allows the user to upload files to be stored in their user profile.

This feature was made obsolete by the introduction of personal spaces in Confluence 2.2. Hence, this permission is no longer relevant. Attachments can be accessed from a user profile view (for example, an image within the 'About Me' field of a profile view) by attaching these files to a page within that user's personal space and referencing them using appropriate wiki markup code.

Personal Space

This permission allows the user to create a personal space.

Create Space(s)

This permission allows users to create new spaces within your Confluence site. When a space is created, the creator automatically has the 'Admin' permission for that space and can perform space-wide administrative functions.

Confluence Administrator

This permission allows users to access the 'Administration Console' that controls site-wide administrative functions. Users with this permission can perform most, but not all, of the Confluence administrative functions. See the comparison of 'System Administrator' and 'Confluence Administrator' below.

System Administrator

This permission allows users to access the 'Administration Console' that controls site-wide administrative functions. Users with this permission can perform all the Confluence administrative functions, including the ones which the 'Confluence Administrator' permission does not allow. See the comparison of 'System Administrator' and 'Confluence Administrator' below. Refer also to the note about the 'confluence-administrators' group below.

Comparing the System Administrator permission with the Confluence Administrator permission

Confluence recognizes two levels of administrator:

  • System Administrator – Users with this permission can perform all the Confluence administrative functions, including the ones which the 'Confluence Administrator' permission does not allow.
  • Confluence Administrator – Users with this permission can perform most, but not all, of the Confluence administrative functions.

The two-tier administration is useful when you want to delegate some administrator privileges to project managers or team leaders. You can give 'Confluence Administrator' permission to users who should be able to perform most administrative functions, but should not be able to perform functions that can compromise the security of the Confluence system.

The following functions are granted to the 'System Administrator' permission but excluded from the 'Confluence Administrator' permission:

Administration Screen

Excluded from Confluence Administrator permission

General Configuration

The following functionality is disallowed:

  • Server Base URL
  • Public Signup
  • Connection Timeouts
Further Configuration

The following functionality is disallowed:

  • Remote API plugin

Security Configuration

The following functionality is disallowed:

  • External user management
  • Append wildcards to user and group searches
  • Enable Custom Stylesheets for Spaces
  • Show system information on the 500 page
  • Maximum RSS Items
  • XSRF Protection

Plugins

The following functionality is disallowed:

  • Upgrade
  • Install
  • Confluence Upgrade Check

Daily Backup Admin

This function is disallowed entirely.

Mail Servers

This function is disallowed entirely.

User Macros

This function is disallowed entirely.

Attachment Storage

This function is disallowed entirely.

Layouts

This function is disallowed entirely.

Custom HTML

This function is disallowed entirely.

Backup & Restore

This function is disallowed entirely.

Logging and Profiling

This function is disallowed entirely.

Cluster Configuration

This function is disallowed entirely.

Scheduled Jobs

This function is disallowed entirely.

Application Links

People with the 'Confluence Administrator' permission can add, modify and remove application links and project links. For example, they can link Confluence to Jira. However, Confluence administrators can configure only OAuth authentication for application links.

Office Connector configuration

This function is disallowed entirely.

Comparing the confluence-administrators group with the administrator permissions

The default confluence-administrators group is a special, 'super-user' group that gets permissions above and beyond the Confluence administrator and system administrator global permissions. Members of this group can perform site-wide administration functions, and also see the content of all pages and spaces in the Confluence site, regardless of space permissions or page restrictions.

Restricted pages and blog posts are not visible to members of the confluence-administrators group in the dashboard, blog roll, search and most macros, but will be visible in the following places:

  • In the sidebar (visible with Page Tree navigation, but not visible with Child Pages navigation)
  • Pages index page
  • Reorder pages screen
  • Page tree macro
  • Content by user macro
  • Quicknav

Members of this group can also see restricted pages and blog posts if they have the page URL.

Members of this group can't edit pages by default however. They would need to grant themselves space permissions, or add themselves to the page restrictions in order to edit. 

Granting a user the system administrator and Confluence administrator global permissions does not allow that user to automatically see all spaces in your site, or see restricted pages. These permissions only give access to administration tools. Be aware, however, that users with system administrator global permission could add themselves to the confluence-administrators group.

You can't change the global permissions granted to the confluence-administrators group. If you don't want your admins to be able to see all spaces and restricted pages, you can create a new group, and grant that group the Confluence administrator and system administrator global permissions.

The Confluence administrator global permission and the confluence-administrators group are not related. Going by the names, you would think they are the same thing, but they are not. Granting a user or a group Confluence administrator global permission provides access to a sub-set of administrative functions. Granting membership to the confluence-administrators group gives complete access to all functions and content.

Updating global permissions

To view the global permissions for a group or user:

  1. Choose the cog icon , then choose General Configuration

  2. Choose Global Permissions in the left-hand panel. The 'View Global Permissions' screen appears.

Add or edit group and user permissions as follows:

To add permissions for a group:

  1. First add the group to Confluence, if you have not already done so.
  2. Choose Edit Permissions. The 'Edit Global Permissions' screen appears.
  3. Enter the group name in the Grant browse permission to box in the 'Groups' section. You can search for the group name.
  4. Choose Add.
  5. The group will appear in the list and you can now edit its permissions.

To add permissions for a specific user:
(Consider adding the user to a group and then assigning the permissions to the group, as described above, instead of assigning permissions to the specific user.)

  1. First add the user to Confluence, if you have not already done so.
  2. Choose Edit Permissions. The 'Edit Global Permissions' screen appears.
  3. Enter the username in the Grant browse permission to box in the 'Individual Users' section. You can search for the username.
  4. Choose Add.
  5. The username will appear in the list and you can now edit its permissions.

To add or edit the permissions for a user or group:

  1. Select, or clear, the check box under the relevant permission in the row for the relevant user/group. A selected check box indicates that the permission is granted.
  2. To allow anonymous access to your Confluence site, select the 'Use Confluence' and 'View User Profile' options in the 'Anonymous Access' section.
  3. Choose Save All to save your changes.

Screenshot: Editing global permissions


Revoking access for unlicensed users from Jira Service Desk

If you're using Confluence as a knowledge base for Jira Service Desk, you can choose to allow all active users and customers (that is logged in users who do not have a Confluence license) to view pages in specific spaces.  This permission can only be turned on via Jira Service Desk. 

To revoke access for unlicensed users:

  1. Go to  > General Configuration > Global Permissions.
  2. Choose Edit Permissions
  3. Deselect the 'Can Use' permission under Unlicensed Access

Unlicensed users will no longer be able to access pages in your Confluence site. This can only be re-enabled via Jira Service Desk. 

You can also choose to revoke access for individual spaces from the Space Permissions screen in each space. 

Screenshot: Unlicensed access section of the Global Permissions page.  


This section only appears on the Global Permissions page in Confluence if you have linked a space to your Service Desk project (as a Knowledge base), and chosen to allow all active users and customers to access without a Confluence license. See Serving customers with a knowledge base in the Service Desk documentation for more info. 


Error messages you may see

Confluence will let you know if there is a problem with some permissions. In rare situations, you may see the following error messages below a permission:

  • 'User/Group not found' - This message may appear if your LDAP repository is unavailable, or if the user/group has been deleted after the permission was created.
  • 'Case incorrect. Correct case is: xxxxxx' - This message may appear if the upper/lower case in the permission does not match the case of the username or group name. If you see a number of occurrences of this message, you should consider running the routine supplied to fix the problem.

Last modified on Sep 9, 2019

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