Introducing admin key support for REST APIs

[#1]

Hello Atlassian Admins,

We are excited to share that Confluence Cloud has now added support for the admin key feature across all our REST APIs for Confluence Cloud Premium and Enterprise customers!

Why?

The admin key feature was originally implemented as a UI-based feature, allowing customers who are organization or site admin users to temporarily bypass all content or space-level permissions within their sites and access restricted content.

Since this feature was introduced, Confluence Cloud has received numerous feature requests to extend its functionality to our public REST APIs so that customers could implement custom solutions to programmatically access restricted content within their instances.

How can I programmatically grant my user an admin key?

We have now introduced a new V2 REST API that allows organization or site admins in Confluence Cloud Premium and Enterprise instances to retrieve, enable, and disable admin keys for their users.

More information about this API can be found on our public developer documentation site: The Confluence Cloud REST API.

How can I execute subsequent REST API calls using my admin key?

Organization or site admin users can make subsequent calls to any of our existing REST APIs using their admin keys by simply adding the following HTTP header to their requests:

HTTP Header Name: Atl-Confluence-With-Admin-Key

HTTP Header Value: true

What's not changing?

As observed in the UI, the new V2 REST API and HTTP header described above is only available to organization or site admin users within Confluence Cloud Premium and Enterprise instances.

Additionally, all actions performed in the UI relating to admin keys that are recorded in the audit logs today will continue to be recorded for these programmatic flows. More information about what actions are recorded in our audit logs can be found here: Bypass page restrictions with admin key | Confluence Cloud | Atlassian Support.

Let us know what you think of these changes in the comments below!

- Spurthi & the Confluence Permissions team

[Dirk Ronsmans]

Awesome!

could have used this one a few times in the past so happy it made it through development!

[ahmet.kilic@catworkx.com]

Removed one more showstopper

i.e. Opened up  a door for most of creative sollutions

Big thanks!

[Antoine _Klee Group_]

Hi, thanks for this feature that sound amazing!

I did not manage to make it work though. I could create the admin key using the proper endpoint The Confluence Cloud REST API (btw the example is wrong, as it is supposed to create a 145 mins long lasting key but they are in reality limited to 60 mins).

Though, header Atl-Confluence-With-Admin-Key: true sadly do not work  for subsequent requests.

Is this really implemented?

Best.

[Nick Wade -Opus Guard-]

Thank you for listening and working towards this solution. Governance and compliance solutions really need access to Restricted content and Admin permissions haven't been cutting it in Confluence Cloud. We're looking forward to wrapping compliance protections around more Atlassian Cloud customers' content now! 

[Sanket Parlikar {Revyz}]

Hello @Spurthi Kulkarni

The API doc says it doesn't support Connect apps.

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Scopes

Connect apps cannot access this REST resource.

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Any plans to support Connect, OAuth / Forge scope in future?

[Spurthi Kulkarni]

@Antoine _Klee Group_ Thank you for bringing this to our attention! The example request body provided on our public developer documentation site has now been updated: https://developer.atlassian.com/cloud/confluence/rest/v2/api-group-admin-key/#api-admin-key-post. 

Regarding the admin key header, it has definitely been implemented and tested across our various V1 and V2 APIs. If there is any specific API that this header is not working for, please reach out to our Support team to create a ticket for us. We would be happy to investigate and resolve this as soon as possible. Thank you!

[Spurthi Kulkarni]

@Sanket Parlikar {Revyz} No, we are unfortunately not considering adding Admin Key support for Connect/Forge apps at this time. If we revisit this decision in future however, we'll be sure to let you know. Thanks!