Link Object Resolver doesn't work for Anonymous users

Hi all!

I'm pleased to share that we have started rolling this out early this week and expect it to be released to 100% of customers by the end of next week.

Cheers,

Andre | Product Manager, Linking Platform

Hey everyone!

I’m Venkatesh, a PM on the Linking platform team. I recognise that it’s been a while since you’ve heard from the team so I’m here to update this ticket with its latest progress.

Adding support for anonymous users to be able to view smartlinks has been slightly delayed. We have begun work on the solution but will likely finish in October. We acknowledge the delay on implementing this feature has been frustrating for you. We will keep you updated on the progress as it rolls out.

Thank you
Venkatesh | PM on Linking platform

Hey everyone!

Wanted to let you all know that we've started working on this and will roll out a solution during the month of September.

What will the solution provide?

For anonymous users (users who are not logged in when visiting an Atlassian link):

• Links to public Atlassian pages (e.g. public Confluence pages or Jira issues) will be resolved as Smart Links
• Links to public third party products will resolve as Smart Links (e.g. public Github repos)

What will the solution NOT provide? 

For anonymous users (users who are not logged in when visiting an Atlassian link):

• Links to private Atlassian pages (requiring authentication) will not be resolved as Smart Links and will instead continue to be rendered as URLs. This is because we can't check for permissions when a user doesn't have an account with Atlassian or is not logged in
• Links to private third party products (e.g. restricted Google Docs) will not be resolved as Smart Links and will instead continue to be rendered as URLs. This is because we require an authenticated Atlassian account to create a user's connection to their third party accounts.

We hope that this solution will be effective towards the problems you're trying to solve. Please let us know what you think in the comments.

Cheers,

Andre | Product Manager, Linking Platform

Hi all! My name is Jonno and I’m a PM on the Atlassian Cloud Editor in Confluence Cloud. Thanks for your feedback.

Confirming the problem

To firstly make sure I’m on the same page, the problem as I see it being discussed is that:

• You want to share docs on Confluence with external customers or stakeholders to your company.

• The Smart Links that automatically render, require authentication, even if a Confluence page is public. Therefore, external readers can’t see the title of the link and just see an unresolved state of the Smart Link with a URL and a message to connect your account.

• To work around this, you’re currently required to update the formatting of all the links to be plain text hyperlinks.

Can you please confirm this accurately captures the problem? If not, can you please provide more details.

Why the current state?

To give some context about the current state, we require authentication, because we do our best to respect the permissions of the links referenced on a page. Thus, the meta-data associated with the link can’t be retrieved without knowing who the page consumer/reader is. We want to avoid a situation where someone with access to a page that’s public can see the content of a different page, Jira issue, Google Drive file, etc, that’s intentionally been made private.

That said, we know that we don’t currently support automatically resolving the meta-data of a Smart Link that’s on a page, even if the link itself is public. We’re keen to dig into this problem, and are hoping you can help shed some light on your needs and use cases with us. Please see the next section and its associated questions.

In the meantime, if you want to opt out of the Smart Links experience, we’ve recently added the ability to easily change a Smart Link to a normal URL. To do so, simply select a Smart Link → select the view switcher in the floating toolbar → select the Display URL option in the dropdown.

Help we need from you to better understand how we could progress this

To help understand your exact problems, could you please clarify the following questions:

1. Are the links you’re trying to share just other Confluence links? Or are they also links to other products (e.g. Google Drive and Jira issues)?

1. Are the links you’re trying to share on the page, also public?

We’d love to have a chat to better understand your needs. If you’re interested, you can book in a time to have a 1:1 conversation with me here - https://calendly.com/jkatahanas/atlassian-cloud-editor-anon-user-smart-link

Thanks again for the feedback. I’m moving this ticket to “Gathering Impact”. Looking into this more, we need more context before we can decide on the best path forward.

Cheers,

Jonno | PM, Atlassian Cloud Editor