OMG..... A fix is actually being released.  Thank you.   I was just dealing with this issue again this week and wondering if or when it was ever going to be resolved.  Will be looking for the fix and testing it out by the end of the week.  Thanks!

Yes, please, we are waiting for an update as well

Can we have an update please, thank you (Mike H) - second that

Can we have an update please, thank you

Will the fix for this issue cover this scenario:

• Issue link is on a page in a KB space with anonymous access.
• Page is restricted to a group of certain users.
  • User must log into KB to view the page.
• User is logged in and is part of the group that the page is restricted to.
• User sees this:
  • Apparently I can't add an attachment.

Can you push this BUG ?

It's annoying as hell since 2 years. I just need to see my external (URL) Links the way I post them for technical documentation purposes or DNS entries which can represent links. They should never be interpreted or shown different than pasted.

I really just need you to create a setting to turn that GLOBALLY off.

Difficult to understand in downunder hu?

This bug is also important to my company.  I am not sure why this is so old, and seemly so simple, but has not yet been handled.  

My team is retiring a Jira project that contained a bug that was tracking this issue because it affects our customers and some of them thought/think our plugin is the problem.  

It has been a few years, this bug is getting stale.

It is high pri/sev... can someone at Atlassian look at this?

It feels to me like it might be an easy fix and a big win for relatively little effort?

Just add checkbox in environt settings "I want to show all Smart Links to any users" and in procedure which show smart link add code like this:

if chkbox.checked then show.smart.link.without.check.user

2h

Would also encourage that you fix other problems with the display of Smart Links (such as when they are used inside an Excerpt Include Macro) at the same time as resolving this issue:

See:  https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFCLOUD-73198

Any progress on this issue?

This issue remains a significant inhibitor to effective use of Confluence as a documentation archive.

While the Smart Links may be nifty when they work, they actually become very disruptive and counter-productive when they break and only display as a raw URL.

We have plenty of documentation resources that we want Any visitor (including all UNauthenticated visitors) to see the link in our navigation pages (which is Why we put the link on our public navigation page!) and to know that that page is available in our resources – even if that visitor does not yet have access to the page with a Confluence account.

Displaying only the Raw URL link is not only disruptive it seems that it is showing unnecessary information about our Space structure and naming – it is certainly not keeping anything about the page or Space name from being exposed to those who are UNauthenticated.

just add checkbox "I want to make public access to all links" in environment options

We created documentation for one of our products. Documentation consists of almost 100 pages and now we wanted to grant public access to the pages and we have those ugly links everywhere. Very annoying.

Current Situation

Expected

I think the problem here that Atlassian may not fully understand is that customers are not expecting the smart links themselves to decide who should see the smart link. Customers are already doing that when they add the smart link to a page, controlling access to the link via page visibility restrictions. Furthermore, the resource that a smart link points to will have its own security in place (e.g. "you cant see this issue" page).

For the super paranoid, sure, have a checkbox for Jira issue/Confluence page links to hide titles from anonymous users, but don't make it the default for all smart link types. This doesn't make sense for YouTube video links for example. The current behaviour breaks the WYSIWYG nature of the editor, as not everyone sees the link as expected.

I encourage fellow customers who are affected by this to read the section titled So, how does Atlassian prioritize bug fixes?
found on this page, in order to know how to improve the chances of this issue being taken seriously : ** https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Jira-articles/Updates-to-jira-atlassian-com-give-you-visibility-into-what-s/ba-p/1029901

Can we get an update/priority on this issue? We've had to edit about 150 pages with links to make this work. This is creating a lot of extra hassle and annoyance.

We created documentation for one of our products. Documentation consists of almost 100 pages and now we wanted to grant public access to the pages and we have those ugly links everywhere. Very annoying.

I found this problem after I have created houndreds of pages with links... now I need to edit all pages to create user-friendly titles to all links... OMG, problem exists for 2 years and looks like nobody will fix this...

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)?

No, this is affecting many types of "smart links". For example, Wikipedia and YouTube.

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

Yes. For example, below shows a public YouTube video link...

This REALLY needs to be prioritized.

Just raised a ticket for this "exact" same issue, not realising so many are affected. 

@Atlassian - please fix this bug with Anon users should not need to authenticate on Public spaces / pages. 

could it be that the issue is realted to this?

https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFCLOUD-65481

since the smart link is rendering a symbol ahead the dispay text?

Please fix this. So to summarize,

• we have the problem with Confluence links
• the pages/spaces we are linking between are public.
• we do have the same problem with external links

I just want to see the page title of other confluence pages as it was shown in the editor while I enter the smart link. Can not imageine that this is such a big thing - currently our public online manual just looks horrible! So please fix this as fast as possible!

My department is working on a public knowledge base for our users across multiple regions. Having it be anonymous is something we want to offer. 

Saw this incident after discovering this issue.

I hope this can be resolved in a good way.

Saw the latest offer to change it to a URL is a way yo work around this. This means a bit of extra work when adding links ofc. And I have to update this on 50 articles with multiple links.

Suggestion

How about adding a fallback to URL if the system cannot discover the user? So it goes to URL and adds the article name as title on the link?

But I would love to have this option to work on anonymous users as well ofc. As this gives our pages a greater presentation.

As I noted above In Oct 28 2020 above
https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFCLOUD-68023?focusedCommentId=2528638&page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:comment-tabpanel#comment-2528638
this is TWP rendering issue.

The discussion seems to be ongoing about what the correct behavior is/

Another comment made by Christoffer Johansson from Inera AB:
"That’s an accurate description of the problem.

My point of view though is that Dynamic links from “public pages” could check permissions on the destination site and if that site also is public it could resolve the dynamic link.

Our use case is a complex informational structure with links between everchanging pages in a Confluence space.

Plaintext links resolves the issue of the “unresvoled full-link state” but is cumbersome to maintain as plain text links don’t show up in the attribute “Incoming links” in “Page information”. So as pages are renamed the plaintext links no longer match the header of the referred page.

Christoffer Johansson
IT Specialist"

Hi Jonno,

For Inera this is a big problem.
We mainly use a lot of linking within Confluence spaces open to the public, but also between spaces within our Atlassian instance.
A lot of those spaces are public since we provide various health information to the public in all regions and municipalities within our country.
The problem with the presentation of the links for Anonymous users concerns us, since it's not easy for all public users to interpret the URL and understand where the link will lead to.

So to summarize,

• we have the problem with Confluence links
• the pages/spaces we are linking between are public.

Best Regards
Anne Orton
Inera AB

Hi Janno,

Confirming the problem:

The description is correct except that the work around is to change the URL to remove the URL prefix up to "wiki/spaces" an add the Link text.

When the page is copied to a new space using Copy Page Tree the link is relative to the new space as long as the referenced page is in the same tree being copied.

If the link is outside the copied tree it will resolve to a full URL and link back to the original space. Since this is an internal space not available for anonymous users, the link is "broken". 

We have to be very careful when linking between pages in the documentation.

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

 ** 

1. It is just Confluence links
2. Yes the pages that we link to is public

The Display URL will not work since we want the relative and not the absolute URL.

To create links I usually copy the URL from the address bar in the browser and paste it to a page. It almost works since the link tekst is now added. (That might have changed from previous versions)

For the link to work I only have to remove the URL prefix as mentioned above.

The example page looks like:

Looking at the storage format it seems that the link text Is stored:

<p>Smart Link: <ac:link ac:card-appearance="inline"><ri:page ri:content-title="Test Link page 2" ri:version-at-save="1" /><ac:link-body>Test Link page 2</ac:link-body></ac:link> </p>

<p>Link with URL prefix removed:  <ac:link><ri:page ri:content-title="Test Link page 2" ri:version-at-save="1" /><ac:link-body>Test Link page 2</ac:link-body></ac:link> </p>

Could the link text that was stored when the link was authored be  used instead of the lookup to get the Page title online when the user is not authorized?

Let me know if this is unclear and you need to book a meeting.

Regards 

Sven Erik Johansson

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

How is this not fixed yet?  This is a huge bug!

Any chance of getting an update on this?

Why is this in the long term backlog?  How does a bug that breaks functionality like this sit unaddressed for so long?  This bug breaks a common use-case.  It is not a corner case. 

It's a Sev 2.  Knock this thing out.  It should have been knocked out within weeks of being reported.  This bug has been in the backlog for almost a year. 

Please invest more heavily in code maintenance.  There is a whole ecosystem out there that relies on Confluence to function properly.

This is a big bug, I don't understand why its so low in priority (the "pretty" links should be disabled IMO if they are not working), we have had to manually go back & rewrite all our links by hand and were not notified by our users because they thought it was expected to see big long URLS!! I am very dissapointed on this one and really wish Atlassian will prioritise this higher.

I have a public overview page with links to two other public welcome pages that then have links to restricted (log in required) spaces.  This behaviour is a real pain.  I created this page in the old editor and have now ended ended up with one link in this <ac:link format and the other in a 'standard' <a href.  Prevoiusly I modified the text on the second link and now they swapped over!  I didn't know of the ctrl-z.

I expect few people have reported it, as it is hair pulling to even realise it's a bug.  You only edit when logged in and have to log out to see the 'exposed' link.  and when logged in I see one internal and one standard blue linked text.  Confluence has hidden it's users from the editing of pages through wiki markup, through to the pages editors and so you don't refer to the storage format (only spotted that recently and we've had confluence for 8 years)

Dear all,

I don't agree with you symptom severity ranking for this case.

This bug affects every user that uses the public (anonymous) access of Confluence, and forces them (us...) to rewrite all internal links by hand.

Please revise this urgently...

That is not the root cause. The root cause is that the object link resolver does not work for anonymous users, and it does not help at all, because we want to have internal links that is preserved using Copy Page Tree to publish the page to an external space, accessible for anonomous user.

The href workaround will obviously not work because it still links to the internal space when copied to another (external) space.

The workaround that works for me is to paste the link and then manually remove the site prefiks as shown in the example below.

Screenshot:

(Sorry I cant upload image to the issue)

Storage format:

<p>Copy paste from adress field in browser</p>
<p><ac:link ac:card-appearance="inline"><ri:page ri:content-title="Test page" ri:version-at-save="1" /><ac:link-body>Test page</ac:link-body></ac:link> </p>
<p />
<p>Paste and ctrl-z</p>
<p><a href="https://e-resept.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/ERESEPT/pages/106561557/Test+page">https://e-resept.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/ERESEPT/pages/106561557/Test+page</a></p>
<p />
<p>Paste and remove prefiks: <a href="https://e-resept.atlassian.net">https://e-resept.atlassian.net</a></p>
<p><ac:link><ri:page ri:content-title="Test page" ri:version-at-save="1" /><ac:link-body>Test page</ac:link-body></ac:link> </p>
<p />
<p />

Hi all.

The root cause is because href links are automatically transfomed into internal links (ac:link) if they are pointing to the same same domain as the page.

You can cancel this transformation pressing Ctrl-Z right after the link was inserted.

Hope it helps. 

sven.erik.johansson I understand your frustration. As stated in the ticket, the relative links will continue to work unless the URL changes. For example, if you have moved the page, the hyperlink would need to be referencing the new updated links.

I do understand you are hesitant if there are planned upcoming enhancements to hyperlink feature but I have checked all the documentation and JAC but couldn't trace anything on those sorts. Until the bug is fixed, I would suggest you follow the workaround by creating hyperlinks.

I asked suport about this issue ( JST-531582).

Here is my question:

Any ETA on when the Link Object resolver( CONFCLOUD-68023) will work for anonymous users? Anytime soon? Before summer 2020? Next Christmas? Ever?

We cannot publish our product documentation 01.01.2010 as planned using Confluence Cloud without this issue fixed.

I have a workaround, but we will have to change all the internal links as described here: https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Confluence-Cloud-questions/Internal-links-in-Confluence-Cloud/qaq-p/1182493
The woraround implies that all the links must be changed to relative links (for example: /wiki/spaces/ERESEPT/pages/30048259).

I am hesitant to change all the internal links in hundreds of pages if this issue is fixed in the near future or that the workaround with relative link will stop working because of "improvements" to Confluence Cloud.

Please advise us on what to do.
Thanks
Sven

And the answer:

Hello Sven,

I'm Supreet and I will assist you with this ticket.

I do understand your concerns, acknowledge that it's a tedious process to manually recreate the hyperlinks with workaround them and can relate to your sentiments. We would highly appreciate to voice ur feedback with our prod manager, as he is open to all feedback and concerns from our customers on the ticket.

In line with regards to the bug, I definitely can see it's marked as long term roadmap, so hoping to be fixed soon.

I'm afraid, at the moment we can't set an ETA for the fix to be released since it will depend on the team's backlog and the bug's complexity. That's why we suggest you add yourself as a watcher on that page, to receive all future updates.

I added an internal comment linking this issue to the report for the dev team's reference and priority alignment. Normally in a bug situation, any updates/discussion regarding specifics of that bug should be continued in the comments section of the bug report. The reason for that is because Product Managers and Developers constantly watch over those bug requests rather than the support tickets.

We as a Support Team don’t have any oversight over the estimated delivery of the fix, such an update is also communicated by Product Managers in the bug report.
If you want to know more about this topic, please check our Support Offerings and more specifically our Bug Fixing Policy.

I know this is not the answer that you were expecting, but as far as I am knowledgeable, this is all I can help you with.

Best regards,

Supreet Randhawa

Hello!

Unfortunately, right now we can't use Confluence for our purposes because of this issue.

I do wonder why this issue is not prioritized higher or that not more people have reported it?

We simply want to use Confleuce cloud for our open documentation without the need to log in.  Are we the only one in the whole wide world that uses Confluence this way?  If so maybe we should reconsider...