Confluence gives you the choice to make the site as open or as closed as you wish. Here are some points to consider:

  • As a tool for communication and collaboration, Confluence is at its best when all your users can participate fully.
  • So it is advisable not to restrict users unless you have a good reason for doing so.
  • Confluence keeps a history of all changes to pages and other content. So it is easy to see who has changed what, and to reverse any edits if required.

Levels of permission

There are three levels of permissions in Confluence.

Global permissions

Global permissions are site-wide permissions, and are assigned by administrators. Confluence allows two levels of administrator permissions:

  • System Administrator - Users with this permission can perform all the Confluence administrative functions.
  • Confluence Administrator - Users with this permission can perform most of the Confluence administrative functions, but excluding those functions which could compromise the security of the Confluence system.

Users with 'System Administrator' or 'Confluence Administrator' permission can assign permissions to other users. For full details, please refer to the overview of global permissions in the Administrator's Guide.

Space permissions

The permission to create a new space or to administer one is granted by a Confluence Administrator from the global Administration Console.

Every space has its own independent set of permissions. These permissions determine the access settings for different users of the space. In order to assign these permissions to other users, a user must be a space administrator i.e. must have the 'Admin' permission for that space.

See Users and Groups to learn how these permissions are assigned.

Note: If you misconfigure a space so that nobody has access to administer it any more, someone in the 'confluence-administrators' group will need to fix the permissions for you.

Page restrictions

You can set page-level restrictions, if you have the 'Restrict Pages' permission within the space concerned.

Page restrictions allow you to control who can view or edit individual pages. To set page restrictions, edit the page and use the page restriction options below the text-entry box.

On this page:

Related pages:

More information

How do space permissions and page restrictions work together?

Example: In the HR (Human Resources) space, everyone in the organisation has the 'View' space permission, but only the HR team has the 'Pages --> Create' space permission (i.e. the ability to create and edit pages in the space). A member of the HR team starts to create a new page called 'Annual Leave Policy'. Because the page is not yet finished, she sets the 'Viewing' page restriction so that only the HR team can view the page. When the page is finished, she will remove the 'Viewing' restriction so that everyone in the company can see the page.

How do space permissions and page restrictions affect links?

Space permissions and page restrictions affect how links between pages are displayed to a visitor:

  • if the link points to a page in a space to which the visitor does not have 'View' space permission, the link will not be rendered at all.
  • if the visitor has 'View' space permission, but page restrictions prohibit her from viewing the page, the link will be rendered but an 'Access Denied' message will be displayed when she clicks the link.
  • if the visitor has 'View' space permission, and is not restricted from viewing the page, the link will display and behave as normal.

Links to attachments are also affected: If the visitor does not have permission to view the page to which the attachment is attached, the link will not be rendered.

Except where otherwise noted, content in this space is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Australia License.