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  1. Confluence Data Center
  2. CONFSERVER-30161

Allow unlicensed, authenticated users to have anonymous read only access

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      Atlassian Update - 27 Feb 2024

      Hi everyone,
      This is Richa Srivastava from the Confluence team. Thank you for your interest in this suggestion.
      While we appreciate the significant interest in this ticket, unfortunately we can’t implement every great idea. We continue to review the most urgent needs of our customers, and at this time have to prioritise other areas of Confluence, which include some highly voted suggestions.
      You can read more about how we prioritise what to implement here\.
      To learn more about our recent investments in Confluence Data Center, please check our public roadmap\ and our dashboards containing recently resolved issues\, and current work and future plans\.
      Kind regards,
      Confluence Data Center
      Show
      Atlassian Update - 27 Feb 2024 Hi everyone, This is Richa Srivastava from the Confluence team. Thank you for your interest in this suggestion. While we appreciate the significant interest in this ticket, unfortunately we can’t implement every great idea. We continue to review the most urgent needs of our customers, and at this time have to prioritise other areas of Confluence, which include some highly voted suggestions. You can read more about how we prioritise what to implement here\. To learn more about our recent investments in Confluence Data Center, please check our public roadmap\ and our dashboards containing recently resolved issues\, and current work and future plans\. Kind regards, Confluence Data Center

      Atlassian Update – 17 May 2024

      Hi everyone,

      Thank you for your interest in this suggestion. We’ve reviewed this since the last update, and understand that the current behaviour for unlicensed, authenticated users is unintuitive. While it may appear simple on the surface, making changes to permissions always tends to be a complex undertaking. At this time, we do not have an update as to when we’ll work on this, though we will keep it open for future consideration, and will share any updates here.

      To learn more about our recent investments in Confluence Data Center, please check our public roadmap and our dashboards containing recently resolved issues, and current work.

      Kind regards,

      Jacqueline Bietz
      Product Manager
      Confluence Data Center

      Problem Definition

      If a user (e.g. a JIRA user) is not licensed to use Confluence, they cannot view any Confluence content (from JIRA or Service Desk for instance) - even if that content is available to anonymous users. They currently have to log out before they can see the content. Customers have also asked for anonymous, read-only access for authenticated users that are not coming from a JIRA User Directory.

      Suggested Solution for non-Service Desk customers

      We cannot allow authenticated but unlicensed users to edit anonymously accessible content, since that would mean that admins would only have to enable anonymous access to have the equivalent of an unlimited user license.
      Instead, we should allow authenticated but unlicensed users to get read-only access to confluence content with anonymous permissions.

      Such users will still be locked out from parts of the application that require a licensed user, including viewing user profiles, people directories, etc, unless anonymous has been granted permission to view user profiles.

      Solution for JIRA Service Desk customers

      Link JIRA Service Desk project to Confluence space to allow customers to have access to knowledge base in Project Settings -> Knowledge Base.

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            [CONFSERVER-30161] Allow unlicensed, authenticated users to have anonymous read only access

            SET Analytics Bot made changes -
            Support reference count Original: 108 New: 136

            Ray Stone added a comment - - edited

            This issue was created almost twelve years ago, I first found it about 6-7 years ago. I have been following it ever since.  Based on some previous comments, this has cost Atlassian revenue. It was a show stopper for some customers and they moved on to other products. I even received some PM's about it.

            Interestingly, I am about to retire and will never see this addressed. We where one of the customers who moved on to other products. 

            Ray Stone added a comment - - edited This issue was created almost twelve years ago, I first found it about 6-7 years ago. I have been following it ever since.  Based on some previous comments, this has cost Atlassian revenue. It was a show stopper for some customers and they moved on to other products. I even received some PM's about it. Interestingly, I am about to retire and will never see this addressed. We where one of the customers who moved on to other products. 

            Andy Hurley added a comment -

            This is causing a MAJOR problem for us. We have JSM and Confluence with thousands of end users but only a few dozen service desk agents and admins who have a licence on JSM and Confluence.

            The portal users are able to submit tickets and view knowledge articles and we have been trialling Forms for Confluence to allow them to submit questionnaires as well but this change means that we are unable to do that. The users are authenticated via SSO (no option to log out and be anonymous) and are able to view the questionnaires but are not able to submit them because of this change.

            The irony is that, if they were able to be fully anonymous, they would be able to submit the forms without any problem so this change is allowing anonymous users to do more than authenticated (but unlicensed) ones.

            I fear that this is a case of unintended consequences and is unlikely to ever be fixed.

            Andy Hurley added a comment - This is causing a MAJOR problem for us. We have JSM and Confluence with thousands of end users but only a few dozen service desk agents and admins who have a licence on JSM and Confluence. The portal users are able to submit tickets and view knowledge articles and we have been trialling Forms for Confluence to allow them to submit questionnaires as well but this change means that we are unable to do that. The users are authenticated via SSO (no option to log out and be anonymous) and are able to view the questionnaires but are not able to submit them because of this change. The irony is that, if they were able to be fully anonymous, they would be able to submit the forms without any problem so this change is allowing anonymous users to do more than authenticated (but unlicensed) ones. I fear that this is a case of unintended consequences and is unlikely to ever be fixed.
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              nmason Nick Mason
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                Created:
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