Single-space guests now on Confluence Cloud!

[#1]

6/29/23 update: Guests are now generally available. Get the latest details here.

Confluence is the collaborative content hub that integrates both tools and teams, but we know not all teamwork happens inside the (sometimes virtual) walls of a single organization. Teams partner with other companies to build integrations, work with agencies to bring marketing campaigns to life, and bring in contractors and consultants to help get big projects over the line.

And now you can do all of that work without leaving Confluence! Single-space guests make Confluence the tool for your team's collaboration needs, no matter who is on the team.

We won’t bury the lead here, we know this is a very exciting, much-anticipated feature for Confluence users, so here are the key details for our upcoming guest beta* launch.

Who will get access to this beta?

Confluence Cloud Standard, Premium, and Enterprise customers.

What will you get?

For each paid user on a Confluence site, Admins will be able to add up to 5 guests for no additional cost. Total paid and guest users cannot exceed the current Confluence site user limit, which, as of publishing, is 35,000 users.

• Each individual guest can have access to one space at a time

• There is no limit on the number of total spaces that can be shared with guests

• There is no limit to the number of guests that can be in one space

When will this be available?

The rollout starts October 1st and you can expect this feature on your site within a few weeks.

[Update on October 20,2022] Single Space guests has now completed rollout!

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And now that we’ve got your attention, let’s dig into the details!

We’ve been exploring different ways to bring this functionality to life with our private Early Access Program because we wanted to get this right. We heard your Early Access feedback and have since made key changes to this offering. We built a solution that allows companies of all sizes and requirements to collaborate with guests. Confluence now not only reduces information silos by giving all teams a single place to collaborate but also reduces the risk of sharing sensitive information outside of your organization.

✅ Guests have no access to people directory or user information

✅ Guest access is fully restricted to a single space with no visibility into other spaces (except spaces that have enabled anonymous access)

✅ Visual Guest markers for internal users to easily see what content is shared externally

✅ Beta admin controls: If you choose not to add guests to your site, there are no experience changes for your users.

ℹ️ 2 Factor Authentication for guest users is coming soon! While it won’t be available for the beta guests, we know 2FA is important for guests and other unmanaged users you work with and we are actively building this functionality. If you’re interested in joining the unmanaged user security early access program, do let us know here.

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The experience ✨

Reminder: This is a beta* experience! We want to hear from you and we’ve made it easy to share feedback directly in Confluence when the feature becomes available.

For Org Admins

Only Org Admins can invite a guest to Confluence. When inviting a teammate to a Confluence site, Admins will see “Guest” as an option along with “User” and “Product admin.”

Once a guest is invited, they can then be added to a space.

Once a guest is added to the site, any admin for the designated space can manage the space-level access and permissions for the guest the same way they manage permissions for other Confluence users.

For Confluence users

Confluence users within a space shared with guests will see two clear markers to alert them to the presence of a guest. While we think these markers are intuitive, as a best practice, admins may want to consider whether or not additional change communications from you and/or your admin team are warranted.

Within the page tree, permissions, and sharing dialogs, users will see a message that the space has been shared with guests. Each guest will have a “Guest” label next to their name when they interact with content within the space and anytime the guest is searched for or tagged.

For Guests

Guests can only see and collaborate on content within their designated space. They will not see the people directory like a regular user and cannot change permissions within a space. They can, however, create pages, comment, and edit content within that space unless otherwise restricted at the user level by a space admin.

The single-space guest beta is now rolled out to Standard, Premium, and Enterprise customers. Be sure to follow the Confluence Community forupdates!

Happy Teamworking 🥳

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*Use of Confluence External Collaboration is a Beta Version subject to Section 14 of the Cloud Terms of Service.

[Jason]

Brilliant — just what we've been waiting for!

[Andrea Robbins]

Very exciting!

[Oliver Seitz]

Nice! We often invite our customers to Jira and Confluence. Can I have a user as a guest in Confluence and a regular (paid) user in Jira?

[Jean-Baptiste d'Anchald]

Will guests have access to Roadmap ? 

[Eric Auensen]

How will this work for companies that have integrated Confluence with an Identity Provider (Okta, OneLogin, etc.)? Will Guests be able to access Confluence Spaces if they do not have IdP account?

[Paul SANTUS]

If we have SSO for JSM clients, will Confluence benefit from this?

[Rosa M Fossi]

Awesome!! But I'm curious...  This beta access is available for Cloud Standard, Premium, and Enterprise.  Will the release also be available for all, or just for Premium and Enterprise?  I don't want to test drive it only to have my heart broken (we use Standard). 😭😭😭

[Kerli Loopman]

Wow! This is definetly very interesting. 

[Haddon Fisher]

I like the idea of having a free "external user" user type which wouldn't have access to directories and other site-wide things. Two things:

- +1 to the questions around SSO. This functionality loses a lot of we have to manually set up and maintain a distinct authentication policy for this.

- I would ask that this functionality remain locked to Org Admin users. We have enough problems with end-user invites in Jira, thank you 😂 Ideally I'd like to be able to disable this entirely, but if it's restricted to Org Admins and is logged in the audit log, then at least we know which of the admins to yell at.

[Brian Haskins]

Is there a way to disable this when it rolls out? or is it telling the org admins not to invite people?

[Sunitha]

Excellent news! Hoping to have a similar feature that works for Jira in the near future. 

[Jake Johnson]

Amazing! 2FA is an absolute must for this. Get it in there!!

[Ravi Garg]

This will make collaboration a breeze!!

[Balasaheb Vadnere]

Awesome news!  Guest user feature for "Use of Confluence External Collaboration" will enable the mavQ ProServe team to share key updates with the client team members for better collaboration! Thank YOU all!

[Kelli Frattini-Adams]

This is exciting! But I am curious.. How do Guest users work with content filtered from Jira? We have had to grant licenses to both jira and confluence to ensure people can view release notes in Confluence that are created by jira filters. This has been a limitation and use of a license just for read-only access.

[Harry Ramadan]

In our use case, an specialised engineering firm with specialised projects for clients, this is a much needed feature. It sounds perfect....

[Krzysztof Kot]

This is a very welcome addition, thank you!

[Bryan Tiang]

Is it possible to add Guests only to a specific Page? 

I have a some Spaces in which only selected Pages can be shared with clients. But not the others. 

[Abhay Gupta]

Exciting feature, thank you @Nidhi Raj !

A scenario - is this feature also available for Jira Software? In our case, some external clients have access to both Jira Software and Confluence. So, can we still add them as guests when giving them access to both Jira Software and Confluence? And if yes, how does this guest feature work in Jira Software?

Thank you again! 👍

[Daniel Le Lant]

Could there be some considerations for time-based access, where access is automatically revoked and their identity is removed from the site/organization.

[CHILUMKURU]

@Nidhi Raj Thanks for sharing about this feature.

As many of users has already asked about SSO and I too have same query.

could you please comment how this feature works for the users connecting through SSO as well?

[Lars Stuber]

@Nidhi Raj will this be possible for space owners or will there be an API to automate this tasks? Or is this an additional burden on the site-admins? 

[Matt Reiner _K15t_]

Well this is just lovely. I feel like the team has put so much thought into this feature, from the admin experience, to the licensing structure, to the UI messaging when a guest is present, to this community post, which explains the feature with the perfect level of detail.

I’m so looking forward to not have to jump into a doc somewhere else when we want to collaborate with someone outside the company. 🙌🏻

[Srini]

Very interesting and useful feature, We have been wondering how to share limited data with guests without compromising access to other spaces and confidential data. This is good news

[Bassam Gemayel]

Great feature! Will it always be available for free?