A group is a collection of users. Administrators create groups so that the administrator can assign permissions to a number of people at once. For example, it is quicker to give group 'X' access to Confluence, rather than giving every team member access individually. You need Confluence Administrator permissions to view and update groups.

Groups are available at the space and page levels to allow for flexible access control. A user in a group will automatically be granted all permissions granted to the group.

Special groups

There are two special default groups in Confluence:

  1. confluence-administrators: This is a group of 'super-users' who can access the Confluence administration screens ('administration console') and perform site-wide administration. Members of this group can also see all spaces in the Confluence site. Any user who is a member of this group has site-wide administration powers, regardless of any other setting. The settings on the global permissions screen do not affect the powers allowed to members of this group.
  2. confluence-users: This is the default group for all new users. Permissions you assign to this group will be assigned to all newly signed-up users of Confluence.

The Confluence Administrator permission and the 'confluence-administrators' group are not related. Going by the names, you would think the 'confluence-administrators' group and the 'Confluence Administrator' permission are related – but they are not. Granting a user or a group 'Confluence Administrator' permission is not the same as granting them membership of the 'confluence-administrators' group. Granting the 'Confluence Administrator' permission enables access to only a subset of the administrative functions. Granting membership to the 'confluence-administrators' group gives complete access.

On this page:

Related pages:

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sites with multiple apps. If you are using Confluence-only OnDemand, the information does apply.

Anonymous users

Confluence treats all users who do not log in when they access Confluence as being 'anonymous'. You can grant anonymous 'Use Confluence' permission via the Global Permissions screen. See Setting up Public Access. This will allow non-registered users to access pages and spaces in Confluence. A space administrator can further control anonymous access per space via the space permissions.

Updating groups

To add a new group:

  1. Choose Browse > Confluence Admin.
  2. Choose Manage Groups in the left-hand panel.
  3. Choose Add Group.
  4. Enter a name for your group and choose Save.

You are now ready to start adding users to the group.

To remove a group:

  1. Choose Browse > Confluence Admin.
  2. Choose Manage Groups in the left-hand panel. You will see a list of all existing groups along with links to remove them.
  3. Choose Remove beside the group you want to remove.

Notes

  • Multiple user directories:
    You may define multiple user directories in Confluence, so that Confluence looks in more than one place for its users and groups. For example, you may use the default Confluence internal directory and also connect to an LDAP directory server. In such cases, you can define the directory order to determine where Confluence looks first when processing users and groups.
    Here is a summary of how the directory order affects the processing:
    • The order of the directories is the order in which they will be searched for users and groups.
    • Changes to users and groups will be made only in the first directory where the application has permission to make changes.

    See Managing Multiple Directories.

 

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