How do I curate external user access to see only one project?

[Ampule Inc_]

In my engineering consulting practice, on my cloud Confluence I curate one space for each client. When I add myself as a test user (using different login credentials), I was able to see all the clients' spaces upon entry into my site :( .

How do I curate the client experience to land my individual clients straight into their own space and ensure they never see any other clients' spaces? Obviously, client privacy is critical to get right.

Is there a different strategy that is more commonly followed, such as to buy a confluence license for each client? That seems heavy, but I wanted to ask.

[Shawn Doyle - ReleaseTEAM · Accepted solution]

Add groups to all existing (and future spaces) to limit access.

Set it up so that the default groups will no longer have read access to any space you do not want external users to see.  Add all internal users to the new groups as appropriate.

Create a group for external users, and add that group to spaces you want them to have read access to.

[Ampule Inc_]

Thanks Shawn for the quick reply. I've now followed your guidance and continue to struggle to hide projects that should not be visible to specific customers. During customer onboarding or their ensuing logins, even if the customer cannot see into a project, inevitably the project names are exposed.

I'm left with the question, what role do Teams play in all this, or are teams irrelevant? Separately I wonder if I'm orphaned in Jira vs Confluence, in that the new unified user management has not migrated over in both tools?

In the end, it's too risky to expose content that a customer should never be allowed to see. As the admin, this behavior I desire, it is too hard to implement and too hard to test and too hard to maintain. There has got to be a better way to expose access, or maybe I need to move to a competitor's tools.

[Iain Davidson · Accepted solution]

I have a very similar situation where I create a login for a specific Jira project.
example: Zaphod Beeblebrox

This user should see only their Jira project and no Confluence pages.

But other existing Confluence and Jira members can see the project.

So I created two specific groups for this Project.
example: heart-of-gold-project-users, heart-of-gold-project-admins

And put in the specific project user and only those other users who need access.
example: 
heart-of-gold-project-users: Zaphod Beeblebrox, Ford Prefect, Trillian, Arthur Dent, etc.
heart-of-gold-project-admins: Douglas Adams

I updated the access permissions on the project, removed all groups, and then added only these two groups.

example: 
heart-of-gold-project-users    [User Access]
heart-of-gold-project-admins [Admin Access]

If you already have company groups for the rest of your Jira users and admins, you can also include those.
my-company-users     [User Access]
my-company-admin   [Admin Access]

Manual process, but it's a setup-and-done situation.

[Anna Mitina _Stiltsoft_]

Hi @Ampule Inc_ 

If Shawn's suggestion didn't quite help with your case and you're open to having a look at what Confluence add-ons can suggest, I'm here to help.

We have an add-on called IZI for Confluence - LMS, Training Courses, Quizzes. Although it's an LMS, it can propose a solution to your issue. 

With the help of izi you could create one or many courses that would consist of all the necessary information specifically for each client. Courses are created out of modules and each module can be an existing Confluence page from any space you have. This means that you could create separate courses that would include every Confluence page from each of your spaces. Your customers won't be able to see information you don't want them to see unless they have a link that is emailed to them after you've enrolled them on the course. 

Of course, I would say that it is quite a specific case for our tool, so it would be helpful to talk that through in more details to really propose a perfect solution :)