Confluence. How many licences do i need so my entire organisation can view articles read only?

[Jason Selby]

I am trying to ascertain how many licences are required so company wide employees can view documentation but not necessarily update just view?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

I'm afraid this is not a simple answer, and it depends on what you mean by "article".

For Confluence on its own, there are two options:

• Allow anonymous access to pages (articles).  This means the entire world can read these pages, without logging in.  You need no licences for anonymous people.
• For pages not available to the world, people need to log in, which takes up a licence, even if the access is read-only, they are logging in and that needs an account.

Now the extra complexity

• If you have Jira Service Desk, you can tie this to "knowledge base" spaces in Confluence.  These contain articles as a kb, and you can (and should, in most cases) set it up so that people who can raise requests in JSD, get to see the KB articles linked to the portal they are in.  Customer accounts exist in Jira, not Confluence (directly), and they are free and don't need you to worry about licences.  They're not anonymous, but they don't need Confluence licences because they're piggy-backing their access from their Jira account!

[Jason Selby]

Nic,

Thank you for your prompt answer. So hypothetically if I had 20 JSD Licences and Knowledge Base spaces in Confluence would be able to be seen by any user in the organisation that can log a ticket in JSD?

Thanks again

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Yes, that's correct.  20 JSD for the agents, and then any customer can see the articles via the KB (and "customers" do not need licences, just accounts)