How do I give and external user restricted access to one project

[Netmaking Faktura]

We are currently operating with several projects, and our employees have access to all of them.

One of these projects is related to a costumer, and we would like to grant access to the customer contact person, but limit his/her access to this specific project. 

To my knowledge this person is not a user of confluence. 

[Shannon S · Accepted solution]

Hello,

First, I would recommend that you provide this particular user a Confluence license, so you can easily manage their access.

Otherwise, you would need to set the entire instance to Anonymous access, restrict each individual space you don't want to be public, and then restrict the individual pages in that space that you don't want external users to access. This would also cause anyone that can access Confluence on the internet to be able to access those pages. This is not ideal.

If you create a user for this customer, then you can do the following (assuming you are on the newest version of Confluence Server):

1. Go to User Management.
2. Click on the Add Users tab, and add the user.
3. Now, go to Groups under Users & Management in the sidebar.
4. Click Add Group. Create a new group that will only contain this particular users, or future customers that you want to have the same access.
5. Go back to Users, and click on the new user and then click Edit Groups.
   1. Add the user to the new group.
   2. Remove the user from your default Confluence group confluence-users.
6. Now, go to Global Permissions under Users & Management in the sidebar.
   1. Provide 'Can Use' access to the new group along with any other permissions they should have.
7. Now, go to the Confluence Space in question, and click Space Tools > Permissions. 
8. Click on the Edit Permissions button below the list of groups.
9. In the text box, enter the name of the group you created and click Add.
10. Set the correct permissions you wish this group to have then click on Save All at the bottom of the page.
11. Finally, you will want to go through the space, and edit the individual Page Restrictions for the pages that the user shouldn't see, and lock them out of it.

I hope this is clear, but do let us know if you have any questions.

Regards,

Shannon

[Netmaking Faktura]

Hi Shannon, 

In regards to step 6, I can't seem to find Global Permissions under Users & Management.


My headline says User management, and I have the following options underneath:

• User
• Groups
• Application access 

I am logged into the wrong account, or what is the reason that Global Permissions is not an option for me? 

[Shannon S]

Hi Eirik,

Can you let me know what version of Confluence you're running? I mentioned that the steps were for Confluence SERVER version, so if you're on Cloud it would be according to this article:

• How to grant access to one space only to a user in Confluence?

I hope that helps!

Regards,

Shannon

[Netmaking Faktura]

The link you provided for Confluence Cloud solved my problem! 

Thank you for your help Shannon.

[Shannon S]

Eirik, 

Glad it helped! :) 

Take care and have a pleasant weekend.

Regards,

Shannon

[Florian Reichl]

Hi @Shannon S ,

is it possible to limit the Anonymous Access to a certain group ? i.e. if my vendors are syncing their ldap via crowd, I wanna grant them a view-permission to confluence, but not fully pay a license for them. And I do not wanna open the Anonymous Access fully.

Thanks and BR,
Florian

[Shannon S]

Hello Florian,

Thank you for following-up on this thread!

Anonymous Access in Confluence means any users from the internet which are not logged into Confluence. Thus they cannot be contained in a group, or else you would need to create a Confluence license for them.

I would recommend using a Whitelist on Confluence or in the instance firewall for which locations can access your Confluence instance. Feel free to reach out to your Server Admin if that person isn't you, and they should be able to help set that up.

Let me know if you have any further questions about that!

Regards,

Shannon

[Steffen Heller]

Hi @Shannon S

I want to do the same as @Netmaking Faktura but I would like to go one step and ask on more general note:

Is that approach with new users and anonymous access the only way to go or is there some kind of an export/edit/import solution that could also work?

I know the Word export/import and can clearly rule that out as it changes the page's format way too much.

Can XML export also be ruled out as it only works one way?

Anything else?