Now available: Editor permissions in Goals and Projects

[#1]

Hey Community,

We know that having control over who can edit your Goals and Projects matters, especially at scale. Today, we're beginning the rollout of editor permissions, giving your teams exactly that.

What’s changing

You’ll now see two clear options on every goal and project:

• Anyone can edit – best for when broad collaboration matters more than tight control, such as early-stage initiatives, team-level goals, or highly collaborative projects.
• Only specific people can edit – best for when a small, accountable group should own updates, such as company or department-level goals or strategic projects.

You can change this at any time from the Share menu on a goal or project.

Admins can always step in when needed

To make administration easier, site and app admins will always be able to edit goals and projects, even if they’re not listed as editors. That means admins can quickly help fix mistakes or ownership issues.

Creators are always included as editors

In cases where the creator and owner are different people, the creator of a goal or project will now automatically have edit access. This prevents creators from being accidentally locked out of the work they started.

What you can expect

Editor permissions will roll out progressively, and you can expect to see them live in your apps over the next couple of weeks.

Your existing goals and projects will keep their current permission settings, nothing changes unless your teams update them. Any new goals and projects you create will default to "Anyone can edit", which you can change at any time. We have plans in the works to provide a toggle to allow you to configure this default depending on your organisation’s preference.

Learn more

Check our documentation for further information on managing permissions for your goals and projects:

• Set up permissions for goals
• Set up permissions for projects

[Tomas Vaicekauskas]

Hello Charlie,

The new features are a nice addition! However, our main pain point is the 'messy' UI when users first open the tool. Right now, everyone sees everything. Will the upcoming permissions update solve this by allowing us to hide specific goals from unauthorized users, or will it only control who can edit them?

[Charlie Marriott]

Hi @Tomas Vaicekauskas, thanks for the question! This update will allow you to configure who can/can't edit/make changes to individual goals and projects.

We are working on goal and project access/restrictions at the moment, which will allow you to limit the visibility of select goals and projects to specific users. Note that 'private projects' is already available, but we're looking to add further enhancements to this.

I hope that helps!

[QMSpot _ Patrick Gehlich]

Can i share a private Project with a external Confluence Guest?
Do i need to give him App Access to Projects in Atlassian Administration before sharing the private Project?

Thanks a lot :)

[Jan]

Hi @Charlie Marriott

thanks for the update. Can you estimate when goal and project access/restrictions are probably coming to users? I guess this is the feature most of the teams working with Goals are waiting for.

Best

Jan

[Filipe Vítor]

Hi @Charlie Marriott ,

Thank you for the uopdate. Even though this feature is interesting, I also believe that  the key feature most users are waiting for is the ability to set permissions on who can see/access specific goals. In our case this is the only reason why we are not using Goals at this moment.

Best,

Filipe

[Akshad Katke]

Hi Charlie,

Great update—this brings much-needed control to Goals and Projects. The flexibility between “anyone can edit” and “specific editors” will really help balance collaboration and governance.

The admin override and creator access are also practical additions.

Any plans for granular permissions (view/comment/edit) or bulk/API-based management?

Overall, a solid improvement 👍

[Josh]

Yes, please continue to bring on more granular permissions.

[Greg D]

@Charlie Marriott when you mention that admins can fix ownership issues, does that include Followers? Today, sometimes Followers are added by mistake. Will that be included in this first release or maybe as a part of the viewing restrictions you are working on? Any timeline on the view restrictions? 

[Patrick Alexander]

We need also those viewing Permissions. And most important: We also will need this for teams and people. Otherwise everyone can still see everyone.

[Aled James]

Good progress, now we just need viewing restrictions / private goals before we can start using Goals.

@Charlie Marriott - Can you provide an estimate on when the more granular Goal-viewing permissions will be available? Thanks

[Hans Ahrens]

@Charlie Marriott  It's indeed a basic requirement to have viewing restrictions on goals, is this planned and if so could you share a date for this? 

[tobias_langjahr]

Hi @Charlie Marriott ,
Mercedes-Benz strongly advocates for the introduction of more granular access controls on goals, ideally integrated with groups and teams. Currently, all goals are visible to every user on the site, which does not align with the level of confidentiality our organizational structure requires. We would greatly value functionality similar to the page restrictions available in Confluence, enabling us to control goal visibility on a need-to-know basis. This capability is essential for us to manage sensitive strategic objectives effectively.

Cheers,
Tobi

[Charlie Marriott]

Hi all, thanks so much for all your comments and feedback - it's always appreciated! A couple of updates to share:

• Editor permissions are now fully rolled out and available for everyone to use. You can access them via the Share menu on any goal or project.
• Restricted Goals is actively in development, and we're aiming to ship it in the next couple of months. This will also include improvements to the existing Private Projects functionality. We'll share updates on the Goals and Projects Community as we get closer!

Keep the feedback coming - it genuinely helps us build better things.

Thanks again,

Charlie