đź“Ł Beta: Simplify space access in Confluence with roles
Hello Confluence admins đź‘‹
Say goodbye to cognitive overload with the current granular permissions table in Confluence! We’re excited to announce that starting next week, we will begin the opt-in beta rollout of one of our top-requested features: Managing space access with roles.
Confluence’s roles are preset configurations of permissions that can be assigned to users, groups, guests, and user classes. They give you confidence in what each user can do and make managing space access in Confluence more consistent, predictable, and scalable.
Starting on Monday, June 16, and rolling out to all Confluence Cloud Standard, Premium, and Enterprise sites over the next two weeks, product admins will see the option to opt their Confluence site into the role-based access control beta in the New features section of Confluence administration.
Simply select a role
Within the Users table, the 14 individual permissions checkboxes to assign access to each user, group, guest, app, or user class will be replaced with a role selector. Out of the box, you’ll have access to 4 default roles: Admin, Manager, Collaborator, and Viewer. Custom roles will be listed underneath them.
View each role’s individual permissions
From the Users table, you can easily audit all permissions associated with a role and, if necessary, make changes either by selecting a new role or adding/removing permissions for that individual.
If a user or group has permissions that don’t map to any role, they will have their access listed as “Custom access” in the role selector. This means that they have no role selected and instead only have individual permissions assigned (a.k.a., the old access model). Simply choose a role from the selector to give them permissions and enjoy the clarity and consistency of a role-based system.
Create custom roles
Custom roles let you tailor access to fit your organization’s unique needs beyond what Confluence’s 4 default roles support. Confluence admins can define the exact permissions, name, and description for up to 10 custom roles, making it easy to match internal workflows and ensure the right people have the right access. Learn more about creating and managing custom roles.
New permissions offer added control
To create the Manager role (and, overall, additional levels of control), we split some permissions into smaller pieces. This doesn’t change anyone’s access; it simply offers more granular options for fine-tuning.
For example, anyone holding the Admin permission before landing in the roles beta experience will still hold all of the permissions split off from the original Admin permission after landing in the roles experience. The difference is that you can now choose to give them individual pieces of the original Admin permission without giving them permissions to manage everything in the space.
Note: People with the Manager role can’t assign or revoke the following individual permissions or assign roles that include them:
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Manage everything in the space
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Export space
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Archive space
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Delete space
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Allow and manage anonymous access
Manage access at scale with user classes
Assign roles to different classes of users, like All Confluence users or All Confluence admins, to grant general access to spaces, regardless of group membership. Learn more about user classes.
Manage it all from a single table
Instead of three separate tables to manage permissions for users, groups, and guests, you now have a complete view of access from a single, easily searchable Users table.
Audit all sources of access for a user in a space
Having trouble identifying all the different ways a user can access your space? You’ll now see all sources of access when you search the individual user in a space’s Users table.
A user’s ultimate access is the combination of permissions from all of these sources. Learn more about the additive permissions concept in Confluence.
Assign roles in bulk
Easily add users, groups, and user classes to all spaces with a particular role (or remove access from all spaces) in a single flow.
Share your feedback
As your organization explores and uses roles, we’d love to know what you think about it! Let us know what you love about using roles, any challenges or gaps you encounter, and suggestions for how we can make roles even better. Your feedback is invaluable as we continue to improve and prepare for our next release.
What to know before turning on roles
Once turned on for your Confluence site, roles can’t be turned off, so make sure you’re ready. If in doubt, try it out in a safe environment first.
Roles beta works best for:
- New customers
- Customers with smaller or simpler organizational structures
- Confluence instances with permissions configurations that easily covered by the beta's role offering (4 default roles + 10 custom roles)
Consider testing it out first in a safe, non-production instance if:
- Your organization is large or complex
- Your instance has a lot of spaces
- You want to assign custom roles to guests (not supported yet)
- You’re currently migrating or plan to migrate soon
Once the beta is enabled for your Confluence site:
- The UI will shift from a granular permissions table to a role selector. You’ll notice the new, split-off permissions available, but no one will have any different access than they had before. Whatever they had before, they’ll have the same after.
- Each user’s access level in the role selector will be represented as “Custom access” and can easily be updated to a role from there.
- We recommend that your first step be choosing roles in default access for new spaces. This will ensure your new spaces start on roles and don't have to be converted to roles in the future!
Learn more about roles
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Join the beta community group
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đź“– Dive into the documentation
We are committed to making managing space access in Confluence with roles the best it can be, and are eager for you to join this beta and help us improve the experience for all Confluence users.
- Marie & the Confluence Permissions team
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Marie Casabonne
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