Introducing: An Easier way to Approve Access Requests to your Confluence Content

[#1]

Hi Confluence Community,

I’m excited to share a big improvement to the way you can approve access to Confluence content access with real-time access requests. When you’re on content you can manage, you’ll now be able to approve and deny access requests on the spot without breaking your flow.

These changes have started to roll out, and should be available in your Confluence site over the next few weeks.

What’s new

When someone requests access to content you can manage, you’ll now see a flag appear on the content you’re viewing, so you can approve or deny access in one click.

Not on the page when the request comes in? No problem — the Share dialog now highlights new access requests with a clear indicator, so you can stay in control of who can access your content and keep collaboration moving without delay.

Learn more about how content access requests work.

Benefits to your workflow

• Speed: Keep work moving with faster approvals and fewer blockers for teammates who need access.

• Visibility: See new requests instantly with clear indicators on the page and in the Share dialog, so you always know when to take action.

• Focus: Cut down on context switching by handling requests where you’re already working, instead of jumping to emails and notifications to check if you have a new request.

What’s next

We’ve got even more enhancements to our access request system on the way! Up next, we’re introducing new controls to give admins more configurability over how access is managed— including the ability to turn off space and content access requests.

Share Your Thoughts

We’d love to hear from you. As always, feel free to ask any questions you have or let us know how this fits into your workflow in the comments below—your feedback helps us keep making permissions in Confluence better.

[Roger]

Is this a cloud only function, or also for Data Server?

The benefits-part with the 3 bullet points is a bit much. Please tone down on the sales pitch and try to imagine you are writing for experienced Confluence users, who want to know: what, how, when.

[Cadence Hsu]

Hi @Roger  thanks for the feedback, will keep this in mind moving forward! This feature is only available on Confluence Cloud. 

[Rob Hean]

Appreciate this update! Keeping track of access requests is.. basically impossible currently! Curious if there's a single panel/page/whatever that shows all "in flight" requests and their audit log? (e.g. who requested when, who approved when).

[__ Jimi Wikman]

Can we turn this off?

I disagree that having this improves speed, and it certainly disrupts focus as you get pushed out of your work to handle something else. That is content switching at its finest, even if this should not be something that happens a lot if you manage access properly.

[Becker_ Rene]

you know ... with the popups in the left-bottom corner, it is already flow-breaking and annoying as hell. For ever click, ever safe, for every advert, for every delete, duplication, etc. there is a popup. It's already an information overflow and since the popups are stacking, it makes navigation frustrating - sometimes even inducing anger. It makes working so much slower.

I guess - as always - you do not give an option to disable this feature, do you?

Also, what if we simply do not want users to give access by themselves and make permission handling unhandy for admins?

Like the posters before me, I as admin but also users should have a page, where we can see the permissions that were given individually and also can be easily revoked (= do not have to click on each page and discover the individual assignments). Take a look at Microsoft's Entra consent page for apps. It is not perfect by far but way easier to manage than your solution.

Please do not introduce this featue in the way you are suggesting.

---

EDIT: found some grammatical errors. Keep the rest :-P 

---

[Cadence Hsu]

Hi @Becker_ Rene@__ Jimi Wikman - thanks for taking the time to share this — that’s really helpful context for us.

To clarify: are you looking to turn off all content access requests on your site, or specifically the real-time request part of this feature? 

We’re currently working on access request controls that will let app admins turn off content access requests for their sites, which includes the real-time experience. 

[Becker_ Rene]

@Cadence Hsu : Thank you for responding.

---

> are you looking to turn off all content access requests on your site

I'd like an off-switch for that too - yes. But here I focus on the real-time request.

---

> We’re currently working on access request controls that will let app admins turn off content access requests for their sites, which includes the real-time experience. 

If this option were implemented, I'd really appreciate it. This would make permission-administration a lot easier.

---

Thank you