Issue Summary

Only the confluence administrator is able to access "browsepeople.action" when "-Dconfluence.disable.peopledirectory.all=true" is configured.
Non-system administrator account can't access to "browsepeople.action" due to "Not Permitted"(The system administrator can access it).

However, the description in the current document is the following, this result is likely different from the following description.

• Hiding the People Directory

  This workaround will prevent the People directory from appearing on the dashboard, but if you navigate to the profile of a user, and then click on the "People" in the breadcrumb link (Dashboard >> People >> FullName >> Profile) or you go to the URL directly <CONFLUENCE_INSTALL>/browsepeople.action, you will be able to access the people directory.
  

This document should updated.

This is reproducible on Data Center: yes

Steps to Reproduce

We investigated the following versions, we got the same results.

• Confluence 8.4.1 (latest)
• Confluence 7.19.4
• Confluence 6.15.10 (latest 6.x release)

1. Step 1: Create two users like this, admin: Confluence Administrator(confluence-administrator), user1: non Confluence Administrator(confluence-user)
2. Step 2: Configure the system property as "-Dconfluence.disable.peopledirectory.all=true", and reboot the app.
3. Step 3: Access the URL <CONFLUENCE_INSTALL>/browsepeople.action, the results like this

• System administrator
  • 
• non System administrator(regular users)
  • 

Expected Results

The description in the document should be updated like the following.

• Hiding the People Directory

  This workaround will prevent the People Directory from appearing on the dashboard for all users, however, there will still appear a "People" breadcrumb link at the top left corner of a user's profile.
  
  The direct URL (<CONFLUENCE_INSTALL>/browsepeople.action) will remain accessible to Confluence administrators, but regular users will receive a Not Permitted error when accessing the direct URL.
  

Actual Results

Currently, the description in the document is the following.

• Hiding the People Directory

  This workaround will prevent the People directory from appearing on the dashboard, but if you navigate to the profile of a user, and then click on the "People" in the breadcrumb link (Dashboard >> People >> FullName >> Profile) or you go to the URL directly <CONFLUENCE_INSTALL>/browsepeople.action, you will be able to access the people directory.
  

Workaround

Check this bug ticket