Invite others from your organisation as guests

Question

We have a small number of (paid for) licences for confluence and jira within my organisation, but would like to invite other employees who haven't got one of the licences to view our confluence spaces and jira board (they don't need editing access). We don't want to make the spaces public for the whole internet to see, but can't invite colleagues as guests as they're from our organisation, if I understand how guest accounts work correctly. Is there another way to share our work to keep colleagues informed, internally?

Tomislav Tobijas · Answer

Hi @Louise Harker ,

There is one thing you can use/try when it comes to Confluence and it's tied to Jira Service Management. Basically, you could add your internal users as customers to a specific JSM space and then 'connect' Confluence KB (specific or multiple spaces) to it. This would display Confluence as articles in the official Help Center, but users would still be able to navigate to <sitename>.atlassian.net/wiki and see content from there as well; all of that with just having a non-billable Customer app role. 👀 (read more here about app access: Give users access to apps)
*note that this used to work fairly recently but I haven't used it for a couple of months, so I'm not sure if anything has changed

Jira is another story and there are no decent workarounds you could use. I don't even think there's an official feature request regarding something like that. The 'furthest' you can get is with JPD Views feature, but that's probably not really what you're looking for. 🫤

To close this out, I think it would actually be fairly reasonable if Atlassian followed a similar principle to, say, Slack. As far as their licensing model goes, they don’t appear to have the same restriction preventing you from giving single-channel guest access to internal users who live under your claimed domain.

That said, I can also understand why Atlassian chose to go in this direction. 😅

Cheers,
Tobi

Kris Klima _K15t_ · Answer

Hi @Louise Harker

You're correct, you cannot (should not) give guest accounts to users who are already a part of you ATLASSIAN organization.

In other words, you have 100 people in your company. Your Confluence and Jira only have 50 seats because others don't need access.

Let's say that Joe Does is your employee but doesn't have a seat on any of your Atlassian apps. This means that you CAN give him a guest seat. If Joe has a seat in Jira, he cannot be a Guest in Confluence.

There is a solution, though. A Marketplace app - static site generator that can create a website from your Confluence content access to which website you can control independently of Confluence licensing.

Disclaimer: I work for K15t and we do make an app like that. Scroll Sites for Confluence. Once you create a website with your Confluence content, you can connect your domain and protect the site with a password or SAML SSO.

More on the subject in our learning site:

Publish Confluence Content without Anonymous Access

Rebekka Heilmann (viadee) · Answer

Hi @Louise Harker

Guest Accounts only work for external users. On a technical level, it's limited to non-managed accounts, but the license agreement specifies that as well.

Confluence and Jira licenses do not distinguish between read/write access, so there is no licensing loophole or feature that Atlassian offers directly.

There are however several Marketplace Apps that enable sharing content outside of licensed users.

For Confluence one example would be Scroll Sites for Confluence (Help Centers, Blogs, Websites) | Atlassian Marketplace You can protect the content via SSO so no need to share publicly
For Jira there are also multiple options like External Share for Jira | Atlassian Marketplace

Again: These are just examples. If you search for "external share" in the Marketplace you will find multiple options. Make sure that they do not only offer a public share but also some form of restrictions so you can limit access to your company.