Confluence Page Permissions Tracking

[Matt Sardi]

Good Afternoon,  I am new to learning Jira and Confluence and was wondering what is the best way to view the permissions for restricted pages.  I am site admin and when I try to open a couple of pages, I get the following error:

"You've stumbled on restricted content

This is because it's inheriting restrictions from a parent page. A space admin or the person who shared this page may be able to give you access."

I'm not looking to grant access to myself to the page, I'm looking to see if:
A) Does this page exist, was it deleted and thus the reason for the error?
B) Which page is this inheriting permissions from? 

C) Who owns and can see the page (there is no help on the page and I can't request access)?

Thank you in advance.

[Brant Schroeder · Accepted solution]

@Matt Sardi There is not a great way to do this.  There are no delivered reports for specific pages or spaces.  If you have a premium license there is a report to inspect a user's permission.    There are several apps that can provide custom reporting and would allow you to build your own reports.  If you know what the page is and what space it resides in you can see if it exists in space settings > manage pages.  As a space admin you will be able to view and change restrictions. You will be able to see which page it is inheriting from because you will not be able to change it on the page and it will tell you it is inheriting the permissions.  As far as ownership that is tricky.  Anyone that has the ability to apply page permissions and has edit access on the page will be able to make the changes which means they could technically own it. 

[Nidhi Raj]

Thank you Brant, couldn't have said it better myself!

One additional point regarding Question A - for deleted pages there is a different error message. See the screenshot attached. So no, deletion of the page is likely not the cause of the error.

[Peter Hallander _Stackedboost_]

On which parent the restriction comes from: as space admin you can find it, but Confluence will not tell you directly, you have to walk up the tree.

Practical method: go to Space Settings, open the page tree, and check Restrictions on each ancestor of the blocked page, starting at the space home and working down. The first ancestor with a view restriction is the one propagating. Confluence inherits view restrictions downward but not edit restrictions, which is also why a page can be invisible to you while still being editable by anyone who can see it.

On ownership, there is no reliable owner. The creator is in page history, but anyone with edit rights could have set the restriction.

If you hit this often, I built a Forge app, PermPilot, that shows each page with its full breadcrumb path plus who can view and edit it, so the inheriting ancestor is visible without walking the tree by hand: PermPilot 

Disclosure: it is mine. Read only, and it runs entirely inside your tenant.