logged in users unable to search confluence Jira Service Desk Knowledge Base

Question

We have a knowledge base for our service desk that has anonymous content for students to view and restricted content for staff to view.

The staff can login to view the content but can't search. As not permitted.

These staff aren't in the confluence users group but are allowed to login and view the data.

As an anonymous user they can search the knowledge base without any permission issues but can't search the restricted pages.

We use jira as the source user directory and jira uses our Acitve Directory.

The only article I can find related to this issue is:

https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFCLOUD-41227

which has been marked as a low bug.

I would appreciate help with this. I don't need all staff to be users of confluence as only want certain staff to create content. But do want them to be able to search content that they have access to.

Shannon S · Answer

John,

Thank you for your patience. Now I understand the issue you were describing.

This is due to the fact that Service Desk Customers have limited functionality in Confluence having not been provided a Confluence license seat.

This is expected behavior, but we do have a feature request here to give them more access:

* CONFSERVER-45631 Unlicensed Users from Service Desk Have Limited Functions

They will still be able to search the Confluence space using the Customer Portal in Service Desk in the What do you need help with? box.

I hope that is clear, but do let me know if you have any questions about this.

Regards,

Shannon

John Humphreys · Answer

Confluence 6.4.0

JIRA v7.5.0

JIRA Service Desk Application v3.8.1

Replicate steps are correct.

Anonymous access can search and view find the unrestricted content.

Customer Account to veiw restrcited content on the knowledge base needs to not be in the confluence-users group and yes not in the Customer Portal View.

Shannon S · Answer

Hi John,

Where are the users trying to search, directly in Confluence, in a LiveSearch Macro, or on the Customer Portal? The bug you linked is for Confluence Cloud and relates only to LiveSearch macro so I think you may be having a different issue.

What version of Confluence and Jira Service Desk are you using?

If I were to replicate myself:

* Create a space which has anonymous access configured.
* Restrict a portion of the pages within that same space to "staff" only.
* Connect that space to my Service Desk. 
* Login as a customer account, attempt to search and view content directly on Confluence (and not the Customer Portal view)
* Login as a staff account, and attempt the same.

Can you confirm?

Regards,

Shannon