Better Archiving for Confluence - How can we disable users' ability to archive pages?

Bruce Macmillan

We would like to implement the Better Archiving for Confluence plugin but we have noticed that any user can archive pages in a space. We would like to disable this functionality for all user and only enable space admins to have this functionality. 

I haven't been able to find anything in the user manual. Can anyone please assist?

Best regards

Bruce

Levente Szabo _Midori_

Hi @Bruce Macmillan

Thanks for your question!
Let's start with the fact that what pages should be archived is defined by the archiving configuration, which can only be set up by Confluence admins or space admins (for the spaces where they are admins). So normal users can only mark pages for archiving, but actual archiving is done by admins only.

Archiving of pages is done by a process called the "lifecycle job" which can be started in 2 ways:

1. Manually
2. Automatically, (in a scheduled time)

Only Confluence admins or space admins can start the lifecycle job manually, so only they can archive pages. Normal users can "only" mark pages for archiving, indicating that those need to be removed or updated.

When the lifecycle job runs automatically, it only archives the pages that should be archived - due to their age or because they are marked by users - according to the configuration (again, only manageable by admins). An admin can also set up the configuration to ignore normal users' marks for archiving, so keep the control at their hands only. Alternatively, you can also require normal users to give a reason, why they mark a page for archiving. Without the reason, the page would not be archived.

So as you can see, there are a number of ways to control normal users' ability to archive, however, our app intentionally has self-serve features, so the authors and consumers of Confluence content can contribute to keeping Confluence up-to-date, by marking outdated or obsolete pages.

I hope it helps, but if you would like to continue the conversation with the developers of the app, please open a ticket here, so we can get to the bottom of your questions.

Thanks,

Levente (from the Midori team)