Introducing teams to Confluence permissions

[#1]

We’re thrilled to introduce a major milestone for permissions in Confluence: you can now manage access with Atlassian teams!

Across spaces, content, and more, you can now manage access using teams just like you do with users or groups today. This makes giving the right access to the right set of collaborators easier than ever.

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What's new 

Share content with teams

Share content directly with Atlassian teams, giving the right collection of collaborators access in a single action.

Teams, just like groups, can have a lot of people in them. When sharing content with a team, you’ll see an alert asking you to confirm whether you want to notify everyone.

Manage space access with teams

Just like with groups, you can now grant space access to teams, ensuring the right people have access at all times as your team membership changes. This experience is also fully compatible with Confluence’s new role-based access model. Learn more about Confluence roles.

You can also use teams in your defaults for all new spaces, and when making bulk changes to space access.

Control how teams are used on your site

From Confluence administration, app admins can set which types of teams can be used on your site: all teams, only teams that are verified by an admin, or no teams at all.

• If you’re an existing customer (your site was created before this feature), teams are turned off by default, so they can’t be used in Confluence permissions until an admin enables them.

• If you’re a new customer (your site was created after this feature), teams are turned on by default, and all team types can be used in Confluence permissions.

Confluence app admins can change these settings at any time.

Share with confidence

Since teams can be managed by admins or managed by team members, we’ve added labels to clearly communicate what type of team you’re sharing with or granting access to.

Learn more about team types

Here’s how you’ll know if you’re sharing with an admin-managed team or not:

• Official teams, which can only be created and managed by organization admins, are verified with a blue checkmark icon

• Groups, which are also admin-managed, are verified with a blue checkmark icon too

• Teams can be created by anyone in an organization and, by default, are managed by its members. These teams are intended for flexible, general collaboration and don’t use a verification badge.

Teams in even more places

• Set a team as the owner of a space – Ensure the right people are responsible for your space by assigning an Atlassian team as its owner.

• Teams in analytics permissions – You can now use teams to ensure the right collections of people are able to view analytics for your sites and spaces.

  • Note: Teams will appear in site-level analytics permissions, but these permissions won’t currently respect the team controls mentioned above.

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Learn more about teams

• Dive into the documentation

  • Teams in Confluence Permissions

  • What is an Atlassian team?

  • Create and manage an Atlassian team

We’re committed to continually improving Confluence permissions. As you try out teams in your Confluence permissions system, feel free to leave a comment or share any feedback with our team.

Thanks!
The Confluence Permissions team

[Milad Sayad]

Hi @Cadence Hsu ,

This is great, long time coming! Good on you.

I am just wondering whether there is any thought or direction on giving us the ability to manage the parent of Teams when we add a team to a space?

I am hoping we can manage access to the team's parent or grandparent in a more automated way rather than adding them explicitly. e.g., If team A is added to a space, I hope we have a control (a checkbox) to indicate that the parent of team A (aka Portfolio team - Group Manager/Team Managers) and the grandparent of team A (aka Executives team - General Manager and Group Managers) also have access.

While most of our spaces are open, this feature will significantly simplify access management for restricted spaces/pages.

Kind regards,

Milad

[Andrew Zimmerman]

Been really looking forward to this one! This will greatly ease the burden of space access management for both site and space admins. Thanks!

[PoojaC]

This is a great addition - using teams for permissions could make access management more intuitive and reduce the overhead of maintaining admin-managed groups.

[Yatish Madhav]

Thanks @Cadence Hsu  and Atlassian. Looking forward to using this!

[Anne]

This is great news! Is this feature already rolled out to all customers? I tried using it and don't see the team I just created so I'm wondering if I need to contact our admins about this.

[Becker_ Rene]

@Cadence Hsu : Cool new addition. We are managing access and groups centrally via SCIM/IP -> How do I turn the Teams-Feature off? (because it would just add another layer between SCIM/IP and Atlassian products).

I also do have more questions:

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>> Unlike organization admins and user access admins*, site admins don’t have these same permissions and must become a member of a team before they can make any changes. Site admins will still need to join a team before they can add or remove members.

Do I understand correctly, that I must at least be an Org-Admin to override team-permissions, unless I am a member? How do I then delegate administration to a Confluence Admin?

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>> [...] Create on behalf of [...]

>> Users who create a new team have the option to remove themselves as a member. Previously, any user who creates a new team becomes a member by default.

Is there some kind of history, that will be showing who created a group? If someone who wasn't up to no good created a group on behalf of someone, it might end badly or even break security.

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If I link a SCIM/IP group to a team and then remove/retire/unscope the SCIM/IP group, what happens to the team?

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>> Just like with groups, you can now grant space access to teams, ensuring the right people have access at all times as your team membership changes.

>> Once you have created your team, you can share content with team members, or @mention the team on pages or issues to notify everyone in the team.

>> For teams with open membership, anyone can join from the profile

>> Somewhere in the text: any member can add/remove members

How exactly is that ensuring, that only the right people have access?

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By Atlassian's estimate, who exactly is the target group for this feature?

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Thank you for your patience when responding to my concerns.

Have a nice day :-) 

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[Cadence Hsu]

@AnneThis feature is rolling out over the next couple of weeks, so it may not appear on your site right away.

If it’s already available on your site, note that the feature is turned off by default. An app admin will need to enable Teams in the Confluence admin settings before teams can be used in your Confluence permissions.

[Anne]

Thanks for the hint @Cadence Hsu ! We just needed to activate the feature in the admin settings :)

[Becker_ Rene]

@Cadence Hsu : I cannot find the correct location in the documentation to show me how to enable/disable Teams and I cannot find it on my own. The feature is definitely enabled and users have been creating teams for the last few months. But aside the Teams Management panel, I cannot find the off-switch.

I looked in Confluence and in the Tenant administration.

Thanks in advance

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[Cadence Hsu]

Hi @Milad Sayad, thanks for the question!  Right now, team relationships are modeled as associations only and don’t drive permissions. That means inherited access for parent or grandparent teams (as you described) isn’t currently supported, but it’s something the team will look into.