Do users have to have an email address to access Confluence?

[Justin Justin · Accepted solution]

Yes, since users are named and also need for notifications or password reset and such.

Also see this:

https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC/Adding+and+Inviting+Users

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

You can work with a broken email address (set it to noone@nowhere.com) but that does mean the loss of notifications, self-help password resets and the rest. I'd strongly recommend requiring that your users have a valid email address.

[Bob Slauter]

Agreed. Appreciate the feedback.

[Justin Justin]

Nic, why would one put in a broken email address? Is there a use case that you have used this in? Seems like there must be for you to say this, and so just honestly curious of the use case (for knowledge).

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

A user who wanted no notifications ever. Dummy users for automated operations which would generate emails that would be ignored.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Not ideal, we fixed the first case by letting the chap lose his password and taking a week to reset it, then gently pointing out that if we hadn't killed off his email, he could have reset it himself in seconds.

[Justin Justin]

ah good - thanks for that explain.

[TomC]

Hi Bob,  We've never gone this route for a number of reasons (at least yet), so I have no experience in doing this myself, but just to add to this discussion a space can be set permission-wise to allow for anonymous users to access it, which some org's use for external-facing sites.  In other words, no logging in is required, therefore no email address. Perhaps this possibility was already dismiissed but wanted to share it with others who may be reading your question.

Like Nic said, they would not receive notifications and such, so there would be a loss of those users being able to use some collaborative features..

Here's an Atlassian blog post from a few years ago explaining some nuances of anonymous access:
http://blogs.atlassian.com/2010/02/make_your_confluence_wiki_public/

[Justin Justin]

Good link share. Bob, if you are getting into public sites, another game at the permissions level, and also see this issue for mixed sites. https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONF-21952 Just fyi.

[Bob Slauter]

Thanks for the detail and clarification. Certainly a lot to think through on this decision. Appreciate the link as well.

[TomC]

You're quite welcome. Good luck in your decision process.